Can't Stop
by CowgirlUpx
Summary: It's been rough. Jade and Beck broke up, and Cat's attentions have been elsewhere, leaving Jade feeling more than a little hopeless - but then there's Tori, who doesn't quite know what she's about to get into. Femslash, Jori - Rated M.
1. Part One

**Disclaimer;**

I don't own Victorious.

**Warnings;**

This fanfiction contains femslash - Jade and Tori. Also, it's rated M. If you're not into lesbians or this pairing in particular, that's cool, but I'd suggest you not read this fanfiction.

**Author's Note;**

Hello again!

I got an idea a couple months ago. It involved Jade, Tori, and an appearance or two by Cat, and I knew I wanted to try my luck at a multi-chaptered fiction. So here, have some Jori.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the first part. It's a little short, but it's just the tip of the iceburg.

**Can't Stop**

_Part One_

She decided Jade was some kind of sadist.

On a daily basis, Tori was threatened to be mowed over by her car or told she'd have her head slammed in her scissor-covered locker, and on some occasions, the threats weren't entirely empty, such as those numerous times she'd been shoved out of her seat or over a rail by one of those big, clunky combat boots of hers, (although lately, Tori noticed, she'd often opted for heels.) She decided that Jade was a dangerous game, like playing with fire in a house made of matches and gasoline; one little spark and the whole thing could light up the horizon.

That thought alone attracted the brunette to the girl in a way she hadn't thought entirely sane.

Tori wouldn't say she was straight. She'd found herself sneaking glances in both directions, and in the hetero direction, a little more openly. However, there were a few girls who caught her eye, and in her silently dangerous ways, Jade had managed to capture her attention and keep it to herself. She found that though her affections weren't all for the girl, (as obviously Jade would probably rip her throat out if she outwardly displayed any form of "closeness,") she found that most of her attention and her attraction were caught up on her. _Only_ her. Anyone around Tori could tell you she couldn't hold down a boyfriend. Her eyes were elsewhere.

Often, Tori wondered what Jade felt - or if the dark-haired girl had any idea that she was silently fascinated with her. The way she moved; her voice; and naturally, that little ripple of anger that could turn into a full-force tidal wave. If she had felt Tori's eyes boring holes into her when she walked by in the hallways, or had the slightest idea of the thoughts that ran through little Vega's head, she was disguising herself well. Not once had she offered any hint of reciprocating those feelings. (Were they actually _"feelings?" _The word "urges" seemed more appropriate.)

It wasn't until the other night when they had been at Nozu that Tori had gotten anything out of her. Sikowitz sent them on a date together to prepare for their roles as a loving married couple. It had worked; the play was a success. Aside from that, however, it seemed as though Jade was becoming more restless and irritable when she was around Tori, as if she couldn't relax. Tori had been slightly put off at first, but after a few days, she decided that it was just Jade trying to repair the breach in her walls - so she could shut Tori out once more, and so she could pretend that nothing had changed and so she could just _move on._

Tori could not have touched closer to reality than that.

Jade found that after that stupid date their teacher had sent them on, she was confused. Things had gotten beyond complicated, (by her standards.) She didn't want to let this girl into her world - no, her world was just fine as it was. Sure, she'd lost Beck, and he would probably not be coming around anytime soon. And sure, Cat had been off looking at boys lately, rather than spending time with her, (rather than taking the opportunity to kiss her when they watched movies, or taking her with her when she went to shop for those cute outfits the blue-eyed girl loved to see her in, or just plain _being there_ when Jade fucking _needed her_.)

Tori wasn't going to be the one to catch her as she fell. Jade knew she could do a lot better than that.

So she'd begun pushing Tori away again, although this time, not so openly. Quietly, she barred the little brunette from her mind. She spent her nights alone, not caring that the silence of just herself between the sheets of her bed was driving her mad. There was no one who would replace Beck - and god _damn it_, he wasn't ever coming back - and certainly there would be no girl to rule her world as Cat had for so long. It would be wrong to let anyone take their places, because in her heart, those places were private and sacred, and they needn't be touched or even discovered by anyone. _Ever._

But she could sense Tori's growing uneasiness as she began to avoid her in the hallways. As she came to a dead stop with the teasing glances, the snide remarks, the physical contact in general. She knew that one way or another, there would be a confrontation, and that she would have to get Tori away from her - and she had to find a way to keep her from returning, and seeing as the more she hurt the brunette, the more she'd come back for more, she'd have to find some other way.

She decided that Tori was a masochist.

x-x-x

A week and a half had passed since their "date," and Tori found that she could no longer stand being pushed aside by Jade. That day at school, she walked straight up to her as she stood at her locker. As she opened her lips to speak, Jade shot her a glare.

"Vega. Can I help you?" Jade asked quietly, silencing Tori.

"Yeah," Tori said before stumbling over her next words. "What's wrong with you?"

Jade's eyebrow quirked, as it always did when she found something genuinely surprising, (or even amusing.) She shut her locker and gripped her purse in her hands, beginning to dig through it as she averted her eyes from Tori's gaze.

"What did I do?" she asked as she pulled out her Pearphone, beginning to text away on it, (forming random words addressed to no particular number.)

She suddenly felt Tori's hands on her wrists, and her phone dropped to the floor. She looked up and found Tori giving her a rather _intense _look, and having been caught by surprise, Jade's mouth hung open ever so slightly.

"_This_," said Tori. "This 'ignore Tori' thing. It's got to stop."

Jade revelled in the touch of the brunette for a short, fleeting moment before she ripped her arms out of her grasp and snarled at her. Then, biting her lip, she remembered to contain herself, to not give Tori the satisfaction of her emotions showing.

"What do you mean, '_ignore Tori?_'" she said in a voice hardly more than a whisper.

"You're avoiding me," Tori replied, her voice a little less demanding than before. "I really thought we were going to be friends after the other night."

"Well, you thought wrong."

Jade bent down to pick up her phone, and as she did so, Tori couldn't help but sneak a glance down her shirt. Of course, Jade wore those low-cut shirts to show off something she obviously had, and Tori often found herself quite blatantly staring at her chest. Jade felt her eyes on her, and as she looked up, she caught Tori's eyes quickly tearing themselves from her cleavage to the blue eyes now staring daggers at her.

Immediatley, Jade stood, shoving her phone into her purse and feeling furious enough to slap her there in the hallway in front of anyone who even looked at the two of them anymore, but finding instead that she suddenly hadn't the strength in her arm.

"That date wasn't real," Jade quietly hissed, "and you mean _nothing_ to me."

She turned on her heels and stormed off toward wherever the hell Tori wouldn't follow.

Tori watched her walk off, and although the words had stung like venom, she knew that Jade was lying - to her and herself. Tori looked up at the girl's locker and then around the hallway, where she found that she was standing out in the middle of an incredibly desolate emptied hallway that seemed to suffocate her with silence. She obviously hadn't heard the bell ring.

x-x-x

Tori inspected the pair of scissors, looking for whatever Jade found so special about them. No, they weren't the pair from her favorite movie - these were her _other_ scissors that she'd been toting around since before Tori had arrived at the school, (and she now pondered the legality and the safety of the girl carying them around at school.)

She had managed to convince Cat to slip them from Jade's purse, saying she wanted to clean them for her, and of course, Cat would believe anything that came out of Tori's mouth. Now she sat here, and, having posted a vague allusion to the whereabouts of Jade's scissors on TheSlap, she had nothing left to do but wait for the center of her attention to come knocking on her door.

Surely she would. Tori had the _audacity_ to steal something from her, and now that she was holding it hostage, Jade would _have_ to come retrieve what was taken from her. So Tori sat on the couch, texting Andre and flipping the channels on the television whenever commercials came on.

Her phone vibrated, and she opened the text without looking at who'd sent it.

"What are you trying to accomplish?" it read.

Tori stared at it for a moment before scrolling up to see who'd sent it. It was Beck.

She quickly typed back, "I just want her to talk to me, that's all" before mashing the send button. A few moments passed before the phone vibrated again, and she read the next words twice to make sure she'd not been mistaken.

"Just be careful."

x-x-x

Well, apparently, Jade was perfectly able of leaving her scissors in Tori's care, because Tori had waited up half the night without a single visitor to her home.

She walked into school the next day and talked to Andre and Robbie for the first few minutes before class. The bell rang, and as she closed her locker and turned to make her way down the hall, she felt a hand harshly grab her by the wrist, and before she could react, she was being dragged in the opposite direction of her first class.

"Jade!" she quietly yelped, and looking to the dark-haired girl, she saw a deadly storm brewing in her eyes.

In a moment's time, they were in the janitor's closet, and after shoving some heavy-looking items in front of the door, Jade turned and had her pinned, her hands pressing Tori's shoulders into the shelves.

Tori looked rather frightened, and for a moment, Jade simply burned into the brunette's eyes with her own angry gaze.

"You have my attention," she said, her voice heavy and strained to keep from screaming. "_Talk_."

All Tori could feel was Jade's breath tickling under her chin and on her neck, and she felt bumps rise to the surface of her skin. For a moment, she hated herself; becoming excited, (_exhilerated_ even,) by a furious Jade threateningly pressing her into the rough edges of the shelves behind her.

"Can we try this again?" Tori finally spoke in a whisper. "Just all of this. Start where we left off."

Jade's brows furrowed further, and she found her eyes wandering down to Tori's trembling lower lip. It looked perfect, sitting there in waiting. _Begging_ to be kissed. She leaned in for a moment and breathed her scent, and it reminded her of Cat - and the thought of the redhead caused her to tear herself away from Tori and turn away.

"Convince me," she said as she kicked the buckets and a few metal objects away from the door of the closet. "Give me a reason to _want_ to try you again."

And just as quickly as she had appeared, Jade was gone.

x-x-x

"Well, this is _exactly_ where I want to be," Jade growled as Tori walked her into Nozu. So much for forgetting about what had happened - she was now taking a seat at the same bar she'd been sitting at two weeks ago when they had been under the watchful eyes of Sinjin and... Well, whoever the other guy was. Tori took her seat beside the girl in fishnets and the server came up and asked them for their order.

As he moved away, Tori faced Jade and smiled. For a moment, Jade ignored her - but the fact that Tori was giggling made her self-conscious enough to give her a hard glare.

"What?"

"I'm just thinking about those two douchebags who hit on us," Tori replied before turning to the drink that had appeared in front of her.

Jade's lips curled into the slightest of smiles. "They're probably too traumatized to come back here," she said with a snort, and Tori laughed quietly.

"It probably would've been easier just to tell them we're gay."

Jade gave Tori a hard glare, and the brunnete simply shrugged, idly taking a sip from her glass as the blue-eyed girl contemplated what was going on inside the other's head. After a moment of silence, Jade surprised Tori by laughing quietly.

"Yeah," she murmured. "I guess that would've been easier."

Jade was not dense. She knew that Tori had more in mind than just a friendship between the two of them - in fact, she knew it was damn near impossible to hope for only that when there was so much tension between the two of them. Not just an emotional stress, nor just a mutual agreement to challenge each other, but a physical, _sexual_ tension that she was sure could be cut with a knife. Jade knew she had a thing for girls - she'd proven it true. With Cat. On more than one occasion. But what about little Tori here? Was she _really _bisexual, (or even _gay?_) Or was she simply infatuated? Fascinated? _Curious?_ (The last word hurt Jade a little for some reason.) Well, as often as she lost herself in Jade's chest, she might as well have been.

"So why are we here?" Jade asked, eyeing the sushi the guy across the bar was clumsily stabbing at with his chopsticks.

"To have a good time," said Tori, giving her a grin. "You know... Eat some sushi... maybe sing some karaoke. . ."

The last suggestion caught Jade's attention.

Everybody knew Jade could sing, but what many people didn't understand was how deeply it affected her. There was something about singing that put her in a sort of adrenaline high; the sound of her own beautiful voice entrapped her in her own little world, and for a moment, she felt nothing but the tones and beat of the music to which she sang. Even if it was in some stupid karaoke bar, the music enveloped her, _took over_ her. And that little duet with Tori - something had felt so inexplicably _right_ about it.

"Alright, Vega," she said, her lips curved into a slight smirk. "I'll take you up on that offer."

It had been around twenty minutes and their food hadn't arrived. Something was obviously happening in the kitchen, as they had sent out the host to distract the patrons with music. Everyone was up and gathered around the speaker system with only a few people sitting in the booths, having already received their meals.

Tori and Jade were still sitting at the bar, talking over the music about whatever they could, (mainly school,) until a Ginger Fox came on over the stereo. After a moment, Tori had begun singing along, and Jade's eyes settled on her, entranced by the way the muscles in her throat and face worked when she hit the higher notes. It was as if Ginger Fox wasn't even singing anymore, like the track had died completely, and it was just Tori, singing to her glass in front of her, unaware of Jade's watchful stare.

After a few moments, Tori looked over to the girl next to her, and her singing trailed off. Jade had her head propped up on the palm of her hand, and there was a small smile on her lips. Their eyes met, and immediately, Tori felt a heat rise in her cheeks. Jade hadn't looked at her that flirtingly in a long time, and although it was certainly a welcome change of attitude from the cold shoulder she'd been receiving, the brunette found that it stirred a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Tori smiled. "What?" she asked playfully.

"Nothing," Jade replied, her eyes migrating to the other end of the room and then back to the girl before her. "Your singing's not terrible."

Tori bit her lower lip to keep from smiling any larger, and Jade found that her eyes settled there again; on those thin, finely-shaped lips. The impulse to lean in and press her own against them shot through her, but she immediately shook the thought and looked off aimlessly around the room.

"Thanks," Tori said. "And you sing great, too."

The blue-eyed girl shook her head and muttered something unintelligible, and Tori's eyebrows arched. She leaned in a little closer and asked what she'd said, and Jade nearly froze at their sudden closeness. For a moment, she stared at the condensation running down the side of her glass, trying to think of something snarky to say, something so dangerously threatening that Tori would have to be a complete idiot to pursue this any further.

But instead, she turned to the other girl, their faces within mere inches, and said in little more than a whisper hardly audible above the music, "You're making it hard for me to hate you."

They stayed like that for a moment, each staring at each other, each wanting the other to make the move that would end all of their current struggles and start something new entirely. Jade was ready; ready to just throw her inhibitions and hopes to move on right out the window and just make this girl _melt_ into her lips and hands.

However, when Tori refused to step up to the plate, Jade narrowed her eyes and gave a wry smile, slowly retracting and grabbing her purse from the stool beside her. She stood, adjusting the neckline of her shirt, (giving Tori a fleeting view of what was hidden by the thin gray fabric,) before shaking her head.

"Thanks for the sushi, Tori," she said and turned for the door, leaving the brunette sitting alone as the next song started up, her mouth hung agape.

Tori was now stranded here without a ride and left with the bill of the sushi that hadn't even arrived, and the scent of Jade's hair that lingered around her was driving her _insane._


	2. Part Two

**Disclaimer;**

I don't own Victorious, unfortunately. It'd be a teenage lesbianfest if I did though.

**Warnings;**

This fanfiction contains femslash - Jade and Tori. Also, it's rated M. If you're not into lesbians or this pairing in particular, that's cool, but I'd suggest you not read this fanfiction. Beyond this chapter, there will be questionable content.

**Author's Note;**

Hey ya'll. Sloner again.

Well, I've had some time to myself lately, so this chapter was relatively quick and easy to write. I got everything I wanted to say said, and the rest is ready for part three. Anyway, I hope you enjoy.

_Edit;_

Do you know what I forgot to do? I forgot to thank all of ya'll for the reviews and the favorites and alerts and all that jazz. Ya'll's support is greatly appreciated, and I'll do my best not to let you down. You guys rock, and honestly, ya'll flatter the hell out of me.

**Can't Stop**

_Part Two_

Tori found herself sitting alone in her bedroom with nothing more to do than stare at the ceiling.

A few nights had passed since her last encounter with Jade, and the blue-eyed girl hadn't showed up for school that day. Jade was known for skipping out on class, but normally she showed up for school at least, and the fact that she hadn't even seen her car in the parking lot said a lot in its own way; she'd be back to shutting Tori out if something didn't happen, and that something needed to happen _soon._

She'd thought about coming up with an excuse to text Jade, but saying, "I just wanted to see if you're alright" didn't seem apropriate to her. She kept punching a few letters into her phone before stopping and erasing them, then starting the process all over again. She couldn't help it; Tori was genuinely afraid that she'd missed her chance, and that it was too far gone now to be worth pursuing.

It was more than just a blur of a memory in her head.

Jade had turned to her with her lips so close to Tori's that the brown-eyed girl knew it was a challenge. _Kiss me,_ the dark-haired girl's eyes had said to her, a dark, primal fire burning in them, like a predator's expression as it stalked its next meal. _Kiss me, and maybe I'll know you mean it._

And she hadn't, and she'd failed Jade's test, and it left her with a thirty-five dollar bill and an annoyed Trina to pick her up an hour and a half later.

She rolled over on her bed and stuffed her face into her pillow. Well, this was turning out to be a lot harder than she'd expected; and why had she expected it to be any less? Maybe she'd had the notion that Jade was interested in her too, and that she would have a little give. So far, Tori knew that she was at least interested in _toying_ with her, but how far she could run on just that, she was unsure. She groaned as the phone beside her vibrated, and as she reached for it, she was surprised to find it wasn't there. Her hand patted the bed around the place where the Pearphone should have been until she finally sat up to look for it.

"Oh, Vega," came a familiar voice. "You looking for _this?_"

Tori nearly jumped out of her skin. Jade was standing next to her bed with her phone in her hands, scrolling through her messages as if it was her own, and the look on her face looked only slightly amused. Her attention was kept on the phone so as to ignore Tori, who, still in surprise, merely watched her as she scrambled to adjust her tank top and even run her fingers through her hair.

"Relax," said Jade, finally holding the phone at her side and looking to the brown-eyed girl before her. "You're as good as you're gonna get."

"Oh, _thanks_," Tori replied with a scoff. She reached for the phone in Jade's hand, and instead Jade set it on the dresser behind her before smoothing her ruffly black skirt and sitting on the bed next to Tori. The two sat there in silence for a moment as Jade's eyes wandered around the room, inspecting the knicknacks on the shelves and dressers and the rather girly violet and baby blue tones that covered the room. It was sickeningly bright and obnoxious compared to her own room, which was beautifully (and comfortably) dark and almost macabre in nature. She'd been in here before and had managed to take a few interesting looking items, (one of which was a little ceramic figurine that Tori hadn't even noticed was gone, and Jade found she was quite simply fascinated with it,) before she came down the stairs to find that Tori hadn't known she'd been in her home.

And here she was alone with her for the first time in this neon-bright room.

"So... what's up?" Tori finally asked, biting her lip as she watched Jade's eyes find their way back to her own.

Jade was silent for a moment before replying, "I'm not sure."

The brunette nodded, as she knew that would have been her answer as well. If anything, she was sure she was _twice_ as confused as Jade about this - about _them._ Jade obviously had the confidence and the bravery to come over to her house and allow her this second chance, this opportunity to step up and accept the challenge that she had previously extended to her, and still she found that she was faltering in her words and racing through her thoughts that seemed to become jumbled inside her head. She shifted rather uncomfortably on top of her comforter before looking past Jade and to the digital clock on the dresser, which read 7:32 PM, meaning she had been lying in bed just thinking about the girl now here before her for nearly three hours.

Tori had moved slightly closer to Jade and was now sitting near the edge of the bed with her. Her mind kept trying to come up with the words to say, but she panicked before they could form on her lips and pushed them back down. How could she go about this? Just hold her head and kiss her? It seemed like dangerous ground to tread on, but almost every step in Jade's direction was like working your way through a maze of land mines.

Finally, her thoughts came spilling out of her in only three simple words. "What are we?"

Jade looked to her, her lips slightly pouting and her eyebrows pressed. Her eyes inspected her expression; it looked tired, lost. Beautiful. And yet when she heard the slightest of listless whines in the girl's voice, she thought of Cat, and it shot a pang of guilt and hurt through her, and she forced herself to look at her own hands, which were laced together over her legs.

"What do you think we are?" she asked softly, the shaking in her voice causing her to sound much more vulnerable and weak than she ever had to Tori.

Tori looked down at the black nail polish that was chipping off of Jade's nails, and then to the ring on her finger; it had a small butterfly on it, and there were sapphire swarovski crystals embedded into it. She realized that it was the ring that Cat had gotten her for some holiday (that Tori hadn't even heard of) sometime last year. A sudden realization as to why Jade was holding back shot through her, and for the first time, she knew that Jade was almost as confused as she herself was, (if not more so.)

"I think we're complicated," she said with a quiet sigh.

Jade gave a rather pitiful laugh before agreeing, nodding her head and looking off toward the window, where the lights of LA were distorted by sheer curtains, as the blinds beneath them were drawn up. Tori watched her for a moment, relishing the feeling of this peaceful, albeit hopeless, moment of quiet that was shared between them, as neither had anything to say but the truth - and though it hadn't been put out there vocally, they knew how they felt. To what extent, however, was to be discovered, Tori decided, as she could simply no longer take this feeling of indecisiveness.

"It doesn't have to be like that," she said, and she found herself quietly moving toward Jade, who immediately froze. There she went again, pushing those boundaries of closeness - entering that space that Jade had only allowed two people in. The blue-eyed girl wondered if this was wrong, if this shouldn't be Tori - the girl she'd been torturing since the little brunette's arrival at Hollywood Arts. It should be Beck. No, it should be Cat. _Beck doesn't want me anymore,_ she said to herself, closing her eyes as she tried to hold back that little electric shock of pain that went through her. And where was Cat when she didn't answer the phone the millionth time Jade called her?

Tori was right here in front of her, drawing nearer, asking Jade to close the distance. She was fair game; fresh prey; a blank canvas waiting to be made into something magnificent.

But Jade wasn't simply going to answer a simple request. No, if Tori wanted to enter this new level of a friendship - relationship - _whatever_ this was, she was going to have go get on her knees and beg for it.

So the blue-eyed girl turned to face her, her eyes half-lidded as she captured Tori's gaze with her own, and there they were again; just like the other night, enwrapped in their own little way of asking the other to do what they both wanted so desperately. Jade couldn't help but find herself becoming lost in the deep, chocolate hue of her eyes, and the longer she stayed there - with the brunette's hands shaking on the bed before her, her shallow breath sending little chills down the side of the dark haired girl's cheek and neck - the more difficult it became to contain herself.

This had been a long time coming, this closeness forming between the two of them as if they were drawn in by some magnetic force, "Opposites attract." (Never had the term seemed truer.) Jade was like a silent and dangerous predator of some sort, with words sharper than any knife that could force her next victim into submission, just as the look she was giving Tori was obviously beginning to break her. But Tori, like some innocent, untouched, _delicate_ little creature, had a charm about her. Her ability to give in, the willingness to _submit_ to not only her own desires but others' as well, (or so Jade guessed - and hoped,) - this, perhaps, was one of the things that so deeply intrigued Jade, and all of this was said by the look of want and pleading that was growing in Tori's expression.

And Jade found that her resolve was beginning to crumble, and in its place was a growing urgency. She could feel her hands beginning to snake their way toward Tori's hips where they would find their place in her back pockets, and she knew that her tongue was desperate for more than just a taste of those glossy, thinly-shaped lips that had begun to capture her attention. And finally, she could deny herself no longer, and she leaned in to allow herself just this one little pleasure, just this one time. . .

And then the door to Tori's room opened with a crash, and Jade was on her feet automatically.

Trina had on what looked to be an incredibly fashionable workout outfit and was staring down at her phone. "Tori, have you seen my Pearpod? I -" She cut off abruptly as she saw Jade standing, leaning against the dresser behind her as though she had fallen into it, and all the while Tori was trying to hide the heat that had risen on her cheeks.

"Jade," said Trina, giving a nervous half-smile. Trina could honestly say she didn't like Jade - and that she was slightly afraid of her. It was also blatantly obvious that Jade despised the talentless, obnoxious, and self-centered sister of the girl she'd been so caught up on. Trina continued, "What're you doing here so late?"

"It's not even eight," Jade barked, regaining her composure as she grabbed her purse from the foot of Tori's bed. "And I was just leaving."

The dark-haired girl pushed past Trina with a glare that told her she'd best be watching her back, and a few moments later, she was down the stairs and out the front door with a hard slam. Trina had watched after her as she left, and looking back to Tori, she raised her hands and nearly shouted the words, "What did _I_ do?"

"I don't know," said Tori, her mind absent from the conversation her sister was trying to share with her now. She brought a hand up to her lips where she could feel a ghost of the light, brushing kiss that Jade had just given her.

x-x-x

The next day, the two sat by across from each other in Sikowitz' class. Every once in a while, Tori would sneak a glance at Jade, who - looking off in some other direction - would take note of the girl's eyes on her and arch a brow and allow herself only the slightest of smirks. Well, _that_ was a good sign, right?

Twice in that one session, Sikowitz called on Tori to say or do something or answer some impossible question, and Tori had been caught with her eyes and mind elsewhere, in some thought in her head, some fantasy. And thus, Sikowitz stopped calling on her, deciding she was either too tired to think or she'd been trying out the coconut juice he so enjoyed.

Class passed by quickly and uneventfully, leaving Tori and Jade to wander the halls for the break between classes; Jade had gone some other route so as to avoid the brown-eyed girl in front of their friends, and Tori was standing at her locker, chatting with Cat and Andre about the assignment she hadn't heard about in Sikowitz' class.

"What's up, Tori?" Cat asked, the smiling, ditzy expression still on her face even as her voice carried trace of concern. "You seem kinda out of it."

Tori gave her a look, wondering to herself if Cat had any idea how she _always_ seemed 'kinda out of it,' (though that's not to say she didn't like the little red-haired girl,) but decided to smile and shake her head with a quick "I'm fine," before turning to walk away.

Neither Cat nor Andre bought that, but they simply shrugged their shoulders and walked off, Cat following Andre like some sort of pet on a leash, (although he hadn't really asked for her company.)

The Vega girl sighed as she came up to a drink machine, digging around in her pocket for a moment to dig up whatever change she had. Silently she mouthed the word "crap" when she came up empty, and as she was about to reach into her purse to search, she was cut in front of by a boy just a few inches taller than her and quarters were shoved into the slot in the machine.

"What'll it be?" Beck asked, turning to Tori and gesturing to the buttons on the machine. Tori mashed the one that bore a picture of a can of fruit punch, and with a loud _clank_, a can produced itself in the opening toward the bottom.

"Thanks," she said, grabbing the drink from the machine and popping it open. Beck gave her a nod and stood there, as if expecting her to say something, the look on his face calm but quizzical.

"Did Jade ever come get her scissors?" he asked plainly.

The girl blinked. After thinking for a moment, she remembered - she _had_ taken the scissors from her, and Jade hadn't asked for them back, and over the past week, Tori had forgotten about them completely. She considered that maybe Jade, too, had forgotten; but the thought of the blue-eyed girl leaving them with her for a reason, perhaps for some excuse to keep coming back. . .

"No," she said, sounding a bit distracted. "She didn't."

"Hm."

From day one, Beck knew about this game between Jade and Tori. He realized the first time he saw the new girl at Hollywood Arts that she was going to be the center of Jade's attention - and, as it turned out, he was correct, and for the first few weeks, his girlfriend had cursed her name when it was just him and her alone together, and when he'd said something about her, she would crash her lips against him in her own little way of claiming him as her own. And in her strange and sometimes perplexing ways, Jade had silently said to him, "She's off-limits for you."

Even after she'd stopped hating her so passionately, he found that Jade was quite simply enamored with the girl, just as she had been with Cat - and he knew what Cat and Jade were when he wasn't around. He'd had first priority, but for Jade, Cat was her princess; her property, (as was Beck, of course.) And he realized after Jade would come to him talking about Tori - the clothes she wore that day, the songs she sang - that her attentions were beginning to drift elsewhere.

And late last month, he hadn't tried to stop her when she threatened to break up with him.

"What's wrong?" Tori asked, her head tilted to the side as she looked over him. He shifted in his stance and looked off in some other direction, as if thinking about what he needed to say to her to keep her from pursuing this - because he had the feeling that he knew something more than she did. That Jade would want more out of Tori than the little brunette would give, as she had wanted from Cat, and as she had wanted from Beck, (which was another reason he had decided to let her go, among other more complex causes.)

"It's... Well, this thing with you and Jade," he said, and for a moment, Tori froze where she was.

She knew Beck was a pretty smart guy - nothing spectacular, but more the type of person who could read people and understand situations without even having a part in. Sometimes, she even went so far as to assume he could read her thoughts as if they were before him on paper in ink. But he couldn't have possibly known about last night; and with the memory that played in her mind, Tori's cheeks began to burn in a display of dark pink across her face.

"What 'thing?'" she asked, as if she hadn't the slightest idea what he was talking about.

But Beck could quite easily tell it was a lie by the way she looked away from him as she fidgeted around. The poor girl had gotten better at acting in role, but obviously it hadn't helped her elsewhere.

"Look, I just think you should be careful," said Beck. "I think you know how it got with her and me. Once you're with her, she doesn't let go."

Beck, on the other hand, was good at lying, and more so at letting out only part of the truth - as he happened to know that Jade had a few _things_ about her that were too out of bounds to be considered only 'quirks.' He prayed, however, that he wouldn't have to reveal some of the things he'd vowed to the blue-eyed girl he would never tell, and that Tori would simply break things off before they got complicated, but even he knew this was a feeble and worthless sense of hope.

"I..." Tori paused, considering what he was saying. Sure, she didn't like being told what to do and what not to do - but she also knew that Beck happened to be the most even-headed and thoughtful one in the group, and his advice almost always helped. She nodded her head, not quite looking him in the eye as she said, "Alright. I'll take care of myself."

And she walked off toward wherever Jade might have gone.

x-x-x

Jade had pulled Tori aside and to her locker as the halls were clearing. The dark-haired girl had the faintest of smirks playing on her painted lips, and Tori bit her lip to keep from trying for a taste, (which she imagined was nothing like cherries the deep red lipstick would have implied.)

"Is Trina gonna be home tonight?" asked Jade plainly.

"She's always home at night," Tori replied with a snort.

"Then why don't you come over to my place?" Jade arched her brow playfully at Tori, who smiled softly.

"Sounds good," she replied, and having remembered the assignment, she asked, "Did you hear anything about homework from Sikowitz?"

"It's hard to concentrate when I feel your eyes undressing me."

x-x-x

Tori found herself knocking at Jade's door. She had made her way here in a cab - something she wouldn't normally have done but had opted for to keep her whereabouts unknown to her friends and, of course, to Trina, who had begun to become suspicious about Jade's flustered exit from Tori's room the other night.

She didn't know what she'd been expecting the house to look like, but it wasn't this.

It was a larger structure, and obviously her parents had money; the house just screamed "rich" at her, with two grand wooden doors with knockers on their fronts, and by the time the blue-eyed girl answered the door, Tori had been looking straight up at the sky to see the top of the house.

"See something interesting?" asked Jade, her brow arched as she looked over the girl. Well, wasn't _she _all prettied up? Tori had taken the time after school to straighten her hair and put on a sleeveless blouse, (rather than the three-fourths sleeved sweater she'd worn to school,) and her shoes looked like they'd come out of Trina's closet rather than her own, and Jade found herself wincing at the heels, (and admiring what they did for the girl's legs.)

"Oh, sorry," Tori stumbled over herself, "I just didn't know your, uh... your house was so... Nice."

Well, that came out wrong.

She was trying to backtrack those last words when Jade reached out and grabbed her wrist, pulling her inside and closing the door behind her.

Tori could hardly see in the dim light, as the afternoon was growing late outside and only a single lamp was lit on the far end of the room, but already she could tell her father had heavily influenced the style of decor and layout. The room was highly organized in composition and there was a bare minimum of pictures or anything other than the necessary things (such as the furniture,) and Tori spotted only a single portrait of a younger (though still incredibly stunning) Jade placed above the flatscreen television that was set before a large couch almost big enough to hold three people lying down. The rest of the portraits seemed to be of some distant relatives that Tori didn't recognize.

The brunette was still looking around when she suddenly realized Jade was standing next to her, watching her - sizing her up. Tori turned to face her; she was dressed in a shirt that looked more like a corset aside from the thin straps that came up behind her neck and actually wrapped and tied around her throat, and for a moment, Tori couldn't help but admire the look of her pale, thin neck framed by her dark hair and the collar formed by the straps. Her eyes moved down to the fisnets that disappeared into her slimmer boots and back up, following the curvature of her hips hugged by a dark blue skirt and her tight midsection before hovering over her breasts - and _damn_ if her chest wasn't _amazing_.

"Don't be shy," Jade said laughingly, and Tori remembered the time she'd felt Jade up without being reprimanded for it when she had searched her for scissors; and she recalled that as being one of the first times Jade had ever come off to her as _inviting._

Tori stepped closer, and for a moment, the two just stood there, inches from each other, simply taking in each other. Jade, as usual, had some strange but pleasant scent about her, exotic and tempting. It was sweet but sharp, and as Tori breathed it in, she decided that Jade smelled almost as delicious as she looked.

The brown-eyed girl felt her hand reach out to touch the other girl, but it faltered, stopping just short and leaving Jade aching for whatever contact she could get from her. Tori had the memory of Beck's warning cross her mind, and although earlier she had simply shrugged it off to find Jade, she was beginning to think of it now, (of all times, with the beautiful girl standing here waiting for her to touch her.)

But Beck - he knew more about Jade than anyone else, Tori assumed. His warnings could be completely valid, and as she considered his words inside her head, she found herself growing shy of the girl before her.

As Tori's hand went back down to her side, Jade caught it, taking her fingers into her own and gripping softly, gently.

"Why are you so nervous?" Jade asked, her fingers lacing themselves into Tori's, a form of contact that Tori hadn't known the girl could even be slightly interested in. Her stare was void of accusation, but were still demanding with curiosity, and her head was cocked to the side. "Are you _really _that scared of me?"

"No," said Tori, trying to ignore the heat growing on her cheeks, "I've just... I've not ever..."

Jade snorted, and for a moment, Tori was hurt.

"Never been with another girl, huh?" Jade had a smirk on her face that was close to a sneer, and in that moment, Tori remembered she was still Jade - not the timid, flighty girl her soft grip from her hand let on. She was bold, unwavering, dominate; _always._

But that's one of the traits about her that Tori felt she was so deeply attracted to.

"Try me," Jade said when Tori didn't answer. "You'll like it."

Their eyes met, and Tori realized Jade was testing her once more, and this time, she decided, she would rise to the challenge.

She stepped forward, taking Jade around the waist with her hands, having broken the grip they shared, and moved her face just over Jade's, their lips dangerously close as their breaths lingered together in the little space there was between them. Jade arched a brow at Tori's hesitation, her eyes travelling down to the cleavage that was exposed by the angle she was looking from. Her lips, slightly ajar, curved into a smile.

"Choking up again, Vega?" she purred, and her hands were snaking behind Tori, where finally her hands were soon to get a feel of that ass she seemed to favor so much.

Tori had expected the girl to give in as she had last time, but it seemed now that her resolve was strengthened, and obviously she was further emboldened by the hesitation in the brunette's actions. But when she felt Jade's hands slip into the back pockets of her jeans, a sound escaped her throat that came as a quiet, breathy moan, and suddenly Jade's instincts were triggered.

She wanted to hear more sounds like _that_.

Her right hand came up and grabbed Tori behind the head, and gripping the girl's hair in her fingers as she gave a quiet swear, she pulled her to her harshly, and their lips crashed together. As they finally touched, Tori pressed herself closer to Jade, her hands slipping around her waist and resting on the small of her back - where else should they go? She wasn't half as brave as Jade was and - _shit_, that left hand of hers was working its way between her shirt and her back, and her fingers were like ice against her skin.

The brown-eyed girl gave a quiet gasp against Jade's lips as she felt her nails dragging down her back, light and ghost-like against her skin. Tori's fingers gripped the fabric of Jade's top as her touch sank lower and lower before tracing circles on the lowest part of her back.

Tori felt Jade's tongue slide over her lower lip, and Tori nearly jumped at the strange sensation. The dark-haired girl gave a soft chuckle, and the hand that was still entangled in the other girl's hair gripped into a fist, pulling Tori's head back, and the brunette gave a yelp, (but never had she expected having her hair pulled to feel so _sexy._) The kiss had been broken, and Jade was now placing new ones down the side of her neck, her tongue slipping out just below her jaw, and a mewling sound was elicited from Tori's throat. And there, about an inch below Tori's ear now, Jade's teeth closed on the skin, nipping there before she closed her lips over it, beginning to suck hard against it.

The brown-eyed girl began to panic a little, realizing what she was doing, and although the feel of the girl's tongue sliding over her skin as she suckled was incredible, she didn't want anyone at school to see the mark.

"Jade. . ." she whimpered, pulling on her shirt, and a moment later, Jade's mouth separated from Tori's skin.

Inspecting her work, Jade gave a small, satisfied grin, meeting Tori's gaze with one of the cockiest gleams in her eyes that Tori had ever seen.

"Someone's gonna see it," Tori said, although there was a soft smile on her face.

"That's the idea," Jade said with mock laughter.

A small drip of sweat ran down Tori's cheek, catching the blue-eyed girl's attention, and Jade watched as it traveled down, lower and lower, before running off her jaw and onto her collarbone. Jade was about to dip her head in and place her next kiss there when suddenly Tori's phone began to vibrate.

"_Shit,_" Jade hissed as Tori began reaching for her phone after it became evident it wasn't simply a text. "Don't answer it!"

"I have to," Tori said, sounding almost as irritated as Jade. "What if it's an emergency?"

The words on the phone read, "CALL FROM MOM."

As the brunette was about to press the green button, Jade said, "Try not to sound so hot and bothered," and Tori hated herself for the blush that covered her face.

"Mom," she said, trying her hardest to sound calm. "What's up?"

"You tell me," her mom shot back, "we're supposed to leave for dinner in ten minutes. Where are you?"

_Crap._ It was her father's birthday today, and they were going to eat as a family at his favorite restaurant.

"Right, I'll be home in just a minute," she said, not bothering to tell her where she was, and with a quick exchange of goodbyes, she turned off the phone and shoved it back in her pocket.

Looking up, she found Jade was giving her a rather pointed look, and Tori sighed.

"I forgot about my dad's birthday," she said as she brought her hand up to her forehead.

"You get me all worked up and then we get interrupted _again_," Jade sighed. "How do you forget something like that?"

Tori repeated her words in her mind. _"You get me all worked up,"_ said as though they weren't supposed to even be caught, and yet the words themselves. . . Tori felt an unsettling warmth burning hotter in the pit of her stomach.

"I've just been so caught up on this," Tori replied, shaking her head as she felt herself laughing. "On you. I can't focus on anything when you're on my mind."

Jade gave a quiet snort. "I know that feeling."

"I gotta go," said Tori. And as if something had suddenly come over her, she reached out, taking Jade's cheeks into her hands as she pulled herself closer and kissed her. It was long and soft and lingering, and as she removed herself, she found Jade's lips trying to follow her, unsatisfied by the ends it left open.

"I'm sorry," Tori said quietly, and as she backed away, the dreamy expression on Jade's face turned scornful, before finally, it returned to her normal smirk.

"I guess we'll finish this later," Jade said, walking Tori to the door.

_I hope so,_ Tori thought in return, but instead she just gave a shy smile and a nod, and as she began to make her way off the steps to her house, she looked back; Jade was looking her over like some hungry predator, her eyes almost appearing a darker shade of blue than they had before.

"What?" Tori asked, a faint smile growing on her lips once more.

And then, as though she had something else on her mind that she simply couldn't voice, she said almost overtly flirtatiously, "You have a nice ass."

In any other circumstance, Tori would have burst out laughing; but instead, she simply smirked as she pushed her hair away from her face, beginning to walk down the street, pulling out her phone to call for a taxi as she went.

And suddenly, her hand reached up to the side of her throat where the skin was tender to the touch, and quietly, she pulled her hair back over her shoulders once more in an attempt to hide the mark that Jade had left there.


	3. Part Three

**Disclaimer;**

Looks like I still don't own Victorious. (Hm.)

**Warnings;**

This fanfiction contains femslash - Jade and Tori. Fair warning right here; from this chapter on, there could be mature/adult content. This fanfiction is rated M for a reason. If you don't like this pairing, femslash, or adult situations in general, you probably don't wanna read this.

**Author's Note;**

Sloner here with another update. If you knew me in real life, this would be shocking; I'm normally the world's worst procrastinator.

Well, I've been away from home for about a week now, so I've been finding enormous amounts of time to sit down and write. Honestly, it's a stress reliever and a great deal of fun. For some reason, I can't stop writing on this fanfiction. So, for the time being, I hope you can enjoy some Jori.

Also, this chapter might disappoint, but I have my reasons for setting things up in a certain way. But I hope you'll like part three anyway. (And honestly, I'm not sure how many more parts it's going to take for me to tell the rest of the story.)

And once more, thank you for all the reviews, favorites, alerts - and of course, for even reading this. I'm truly thankful.

**Can't Stop**

_Part Three_

The night before had damn near been a disaster.

Tori had gotten home and quietly tried to sneak through the living room and to her own bedroom, but her parents were standing in the kitchen watching her. Immediately she was spotted, and as she tried to tell them she was going to change, her plans to conceal that mark on her neck were thwarted.

Apparently, it was half-past six and their reservations were at a quarter til seven, and if they weren't out the door _that second,_ they would be late. She made the excuse of needing to go to the bathroom, and rushing upstairs and before the mirror, she hauled open the drawers and began digging for some concealer and powder, and immediately, she began masking the dark bruise just below her jaw.

Her parents called out for her, and she hollered "just a second" a few times to try to calm them. But as she was putting her makeup back in the drawer, the door to the bathroom flew open, and Tori instantly reached up for the side of her neck instinctively, as she hadn't quite blended the coverage on the mark.

"What are you -" Trina stopped. Narrowing her eyes and trying to get a look at what was under her hand, she moved closer, grasping Tori's wrist and attempting to pull it away. As Tori's face changed into a bright hue of deep pink, Trina's lips curled into a cheshire grin. "You have a hickey."

"Shut up," Tori said, embarrassed as she removed her hand. The dark spot was no longer visible unless you were actually looking for it in that _exact_ spot, but the makeup needed to be blended better, as it left a patch of powdery-looking skin. She rubbed it in as her sister began to bombard her with questions, and finally, she shoved past her, making her way down the stairs and to her waiting parents with a rather flustered Trina behind her.

And so in choosing her outfit for school the next day, she opted for a rather convenient purple velvet choker that Trina had found in her rather extensive collection of accessories, and although it wasn't something that Tori would normally wear, it was wide enough to cover the spot without looking incredibly conspicuous as a bandage or high-collared shirt would, (as the springtime was bringing in a new wave of heat in LA.)

Shutting her locker, she nearly jumped at the sight of Jade leaning against the metal door next to her, her right brow arched slightly as she looked over the little brunette in front of her. The smile on her (luscious) lips told Tori that she was, indeed, incredibly amused by the effect of her actions the day before.

"I like that choker," the blue-eyed girl said, chuckling slightly. "It makes me think of you as my pet."

Tori's face was burning once more, (and it certainly seemed as if it were happening more often lately.)

"It's Trina's," Tori spat, trying her best to not let her embarrassment show. "And I'm not your pet."

Jade snorted, ignoring the part about Trina, as she wasn't pleased with herself for having liked something that came out of her wardrobe, (although she hadn't seen the girl ever wear it.) And then, as though she were remembering the afternoon before, she gave a subtly devious look, her eyes wandering down to the side of Tori's neck where she had so carelessly allowed herself to suckle the flesh and leave her mark on the girl for all to see without that little choker around her neck.

The dark-haired girl came a little closer, and in little more than a whisper she said, "You _are _my pet - and I think you like it."

Tori attempted to hide her face as Jade gave a smug grin, grabbing her by the wrist and leading her off. No one in the halls paid them any attention as it had become somewhat of a custom for one of these two to drag the other across the halls and to the janitor's closet. Jade opened the door and pulled the other girl inside, and as she closed the door behind her, she looked over her shoulder at the brunette with a hungry look in her eyes.

Immediately, Tori's wrists were against the wall behind her beside the shelves, pinned by the fingers with slightly chipped dark nail polish, and Jade's mouth was hovering over Tori's. The brown-eyed girl felt a heat growing in her chest, and as Jade finally closed the distance between them, she allowed herself to melt into the feel of her silky lips against her own thinner ones. Almost impatiently, Jade slipped her tongue between Tori's lips, causing her to gasp; the blue-eyed girl took the opportunity to capture the other girl's tongue.

Tori couldn't help but feel dirty as the girl's tongue began to invade her mouth, but though the sensation was strange, it was incredibly hot, and she began to let out little whimpering sounds as they continued. Jade made a sound similar to a growl, and after a moment, she drew away from her before moving to place those hot, wet kisses down the side of her jaw.

"Jade..." Tori began, gasping as the girl's tongue slipped out over that sensitive skin just below the side of her jaw. "Should we... here...?"

Jade smiled against her skin. "Why not?" And then, moving so that her breath was now tickling Tori's ear, she whispered to her, "I want you _right now._"

By the time Tori could come up with any more protests, the blue-eyed girl's hands were slipping behind the brunette's neck, unfastening the choker. She set it aside on the shelves and moved so that she could have access to the spot where the blood had risen to the skin. Jade dipped her head in and placed a warm, delicate kiss there, as if, in her own way, apologizing for having left it there.

After paying it some attention, she moved herself lower still so that she was bent over Tori's collarbone, where she nipped and lightly suckled the skin there, exposed by Tori's low cut shirt. Her hands had made their way down and were now running up and down the sides of the brown-eyed girl's midsection, slipping closer and closer still to Tori's breasts, causing the pinned girl to whimper in desperation to be touched.

Jade's hands had found their way under the hem of the girl's shirt and were now working their way up, feeling Tori's flat stomach before tickling lightly under her bra, which nearly drove Tori insane. Her blouse had slipped up along with the dark-haired girl's hands, allowing the cool air to tickle at her skin as her hands made their way closer and closer to her chest.

Finally, one of Jade' hands brushed over her right breast, and Tori gasped as the girl's teeth nipped at her collarbone at the same time. She whimpered something hardly audible, and Jade's lips curved into a smile as she softly suckled at the skin there. As Tori's lids fluttered open, she found a pair of bright turquoise eyes staring straight back at her, and at the sight, she felt something inside her core come ablaze.

"What was that, Vega?" Jade asked, and to Tori, the authority on her face had never looked sexier. The girl with blue-streaks moved up so that her lips were just below Tori's, and staring straight into those deep chocolate eyes, she challenged the girl.

When Tori didn't respond, Jade teasingly swept her hand over the lacey fabric that covered her breast, and the brunette whimpered, arching her back in attempt to press her chest into the girl's hand.

"What do you want?" Jade asked, her voice low, assertive; _demanding._ "Tell me."

Her fingers lightly teased the skin through that thin material, and finally, Tori nearly shuddered.

"_Please,_" she began, her eyes lightly lidded and her brows pressed, "touch me there."

As if satisfied, Jade's hand pressed into her, and she began to knead her breast, and Tori gasped, her breath suddenly catching. She leaned her head back, and Jade's tongue swept out and over the skin beneath her chin, and Tori had to clasp a hand over her mouth to keep from groaning.

Jade's fingers pinched her now-hardened nipple, and Tori bit into her own hand in an attempt to keep quiet. The heat in her core had moved lower, and now she was beginning to feel a throbbing stirring between her legs, and she shifted her hips for some sort of relief. As if Jade had sensed Tori's growing need, she moved so that her thigh was now between the girl's legs and pressed closer to her.

"Oh _God_," Tori sighed, her voice hardly muffled by her hand. Her hips instinctively bucked into the other girl, causing her to slide over Jade's thigh and sending a shot of pleasureable sensation through her body. She couldn't help the sounds escaping her throat, and her hands were now gripping into the fabric of Jade's shirt as she began to move herself over the girl's leg.

This was the farthest Tori had ever been with anyone; in fact, this was quite a bit further than she'd been before. She had imagined doing this before - well, not like this. Not in the janitors' closet at the risk of someone unknowingly walking in to find a girl desperately grinding herself against another. And what if it was Andre? Or worse - what if it was Beck? Or Cat?

Tori abandoned all of these worries and all other thought as she began to feel herself reach a new sort of heat and pressure between her legs and a new sensation in her lower abdomen.

"Jade. . ." Her voice was desperate and came to the blue-eyed girl as a plea for relief.

Suddenly, Jade's leg was away from her, and Tori found herself trying to follow it. Opening her eyes, she found Jade staring intently at her as she backed away, looking rather cocky. Tori realized for the first time that her breath had become shallow and had come faster, and as she attempted to catch her breath, she felt that amazing feeling between her thighs dying down.

"Why did you...?" Tori's voice drifted off.

"You were being too loud," Jade replied, her brow arching in amusement. "Someone could hear you in the hall."

Tori turned away to hide the embarrassment that was now playing on her face, but Jade's hand came up, gripping her chin between her index finger and thumb and turning the girl to face her once more. Then, moving herself closer to the girl, she parted her lips, drawing in Tori's own breath.

"Consider us even - after last night," the dark haired girl murmured, and Tori remembered what she had said then when she'd had to leave to eat with her family - _"__You get me all worked up and then we get interrupted again."_ Tori could have slapped herself, as she now knew exactly what that had done to Jade, and the unsettling need to be touched was beginning to cause her to hurt.

"But don't worry; I'll _wear you out _tonight," Jade spoke with finality before placing a kiss on Tori's lips that felt painfully empty compared to the ones she'd given her earlier.

Jade backed away and was moving toward the door, and turning the handle, she chuckled as she cast a glance over her shoulder to Tori, who was leaned against the wall, working to regain her composure. Finally, Jade made her way out of the closet, straightening her blouse and hair as she made her way down the hall to her first class of the day.

By the time Tori's heartbeat was back to a normal pace, several minutes had passed. She remembered the mark that was still on her neck, and as she turned to the shelf where Jade had placed her choker, she realized that it was no longer there, and that Jade could very easily be a sly and sneaky little bitch.

Tori groaned as she felt the wetness between her legs and realized that she would either have to ask Jade to return her only protection from others' scrutinizing gazes on her neck, or she would have to ditch school for the day.

x-x-x

Jade had long since stopped even listening to the man speaking at the front of the class. He was a younger man who looked fresh out of college with wide-rimmed glasses and a hat that screamed "hipster" placed on his head slightly awkwardly, and for some reason, Jade got the feeling that he was going to be some sort of big shot some day. Something about him was charismatic, (although Jade opted for calling him metrosexual instead,) and by the way he would look you in the eyes when he spoke, gesturing with his hands in appropriate time with the words he said, it was obvious to her that he was some sort of socialite.

Any other day, she would have listened - hung on to his every last word, perhaps even scribbled down a note or two with the names of contacts or ideas that seemed so innovative - but today, her mind was elsewhere.

Tori had sent a text asking rather tentatively for the choker, and Jade had simply replied, "Come and get it if you want it."

Since Tori had not shown up in the hallways or in the classes they shared, the dark-haired girl guessed that she'd gone home to see if she could find something else with which to hide that mark on her neck. Jade had seemingly shrugged things off as if they were nothing - like that mark was just something she'd placed there on her neck in the heat of a moment, and that it wouldn't bee noticed by anyone, and that no one would care. But to her, it was much, much more than that.

To Jade, this was a symbol of her own rebellion; claiming her freedom from the two people who had made up so much of her life for so long. She had left her mark on someone else, and she had made this girl her own. If Beck saw that mark, he would know immediately; and he would read it as Jade had intended. "_I'm over you._" Cat, on the other hand, would not quite understand, but she did have a way of getting the information she needed. Smiling, Jade realized the little airhead would probably get answers directly from the source, as Tori, too, had a soft-spot for little Cat, and it had become incredibly hard to keep anything from her. But then, she wondered, what would that do to them - Cat and Jade? Would that put an end to things - would that become the final blow?

Jade shrugged and decided she didn't care if it hurt the redhead. She was still sore at her - Cat wasn't coming around much anymore, and when she did, it was as if all she had to talk about was her latest obsession in boys, which, for the moment, seemed to be Andre, (and who would have guessed _that_?) Cat was over her interest in Jade. Perhaps her affection had come to a halt when the danger of being "caught" by the blue-eyed girl's boyfriend was no longer present, and that had taken edge away from the _forbidden romance_ they had been carrying on for so long, (for what, six months now? Eight? Jade couldn't bring herself to recall.)

And of course, there was Beck.

Beck. Though she couldn't quite come to say she hated him so passionately, there was a place in her heart that truly did - that sincerely wanted to watch him suffer, as he had caused her to. H should have come after her. He should have been out that door before she even counted to the number three, and he should have taken her into his arms and kissed her and reassured her that things were going to be all right. And when Jade had needed him so desperately, to help her keep that dwindling flame of her affection alive, he had failed her. _Purposely._ And now, she decided, she hated him, and she wanted to see that he realized how strong she had become and just how independent of him she truly was. But how could she prove that?

Tori was so inconveniently convenient.

Yes, for some time now, Jade had been watching her subconsciously; her every move closer noted, every glance in her direction embedded in her mind. But when the time had come that Jade was without the people she'd held closest to her heart for all that time, Tori was there. She was right before her, willing to close the gap between them, ready to become her newest and most intriguing infatuation - her _latest distraction_.

But Jade had a way about her that made everything around her work for her. Without even realizing it, she had a way of using the people she was close to. It wasn't that she meant to, but Jade was an incredibly resourceful person, and everything around her served purpose beyond an emotional connection. Beck was her shield; Cat was her haven; and Tori. . .

Tori was her outlet.

Whether it was feelings of burning hatred or of gentle affection, Tori was the one who took the blunt of it. Jade could come barging into her house with tear-stained cheeks and the brunette would take her in, regardless of the cause of the breakdown, never questioning the need Jade felt to come to her first. The girl with those loving hands would go so far as to stroke the other's wavy hair if it wasn't for the glares that the dark-headed girl shot in her direction at the closeness, (as at the time of her last break down, her policy had been different - _keep Vega at arm's length._) Hell, she guessed that she could hurl a pair of scissors in her direction and Tori would take the hit if it calmed the raging storm inside the blue-eyed animal. Because that's just what Tori did. She was the masochist - the lover of the pain and the unsteadiness and the dangerous path they walked. She was the only receiving end of the blows that only Jade could deal, and although Jade hadn't tried to dwell on it, it hurt her chest and her head knowing in the back of her mind that Tori was simply her plaything.

Even with all these thoughts of self-hatred and revenge swirling violently around in her head, she couldn't help but relish the feelings of affection that were beginning to grow, like some seed after a hard and unforgiving winter. And it was unnatural, these feelings of want - no, _need_ - that were beginning to well up in her heart. A hunter should never fall in love with her prey, nor a warrior with her enemy, nor a queen with her slave, as it would surely throw the cycle off balance; and yet, she found that when she was alone with Tori, giving her physical displays of emotion through her hands and lips and eyes and words, it all felt so incredibly _natural _to her.

And although it was too sick and unsettling to call "love," Jade realized that Tori was gaining ground. And soon enough, Jade would have given herself up to this little thing of beauty that she had tortured and cursed and tried her damnedest to hate for so long.

"God _damnit_," she whispered aloud, and thankfully, the only one who had heard her was Cat, who was sitting next to her.

Cat, the ditzy but amazingly talented little redhead, was not even half as dumb as she put on, and when she caught the swear escaping Jade's lips, she knew immediately that something had been happening, somewhere beyond her, somewhere outside of her reach. She felt her heart twist into ungodly knots and curls inside her chest, and looking down at her hands in her lap, she bit her tongue to keep herself from pouring her heart out to the girl beside her.

And she couldn't help but wonder behind those pained doe eyes - "_When did she stop telling me everything?_"

x-x-x

Jade knocked on the door. She'd decided to go for a visit during lunch to see if she could catch up with Tori, who, as far as she knew, had gone home earlier in the day. There was silence behind the door, and she supposed the girl could be taking a nap up in her room or wasn't at home at all, but she continued knocking, calling her name out once or twice before sighing. Pulling her phone out of her purse, she dialed Tori's number and listened as it rang.

"Jade?" Tori's voice came over the phone.

"I'm at your house. Are you here?" Jade asked plainly, twisting a few strands of her own hair with her finger as she listened to the sound of running water in the background.

"Yeah," Tori replied, almost laughing. "I'm in the shower. The key's under the window."

"Alright, I'll be there in a second," Jade murmured, pressing the red button and ending the call. She moved to the right of the door and to the window, where the blinds were closed. She ran her hand under the windowsill until her fingers slipped over cold metal, and pulling it from the little crevice there, she gave a satisfied smirk.

After closed the door behind her, she set the key on the cofee table and listened closely to the pitter patter of water coming from upstairs. And, as she had expected, there was a low, soft sound of music playing from a radio, and Tori was singing along with it.

Jade made her way up the stairs, looking at a few portraits of the girls on the walls on her way up, before she took a right and turned so that she was outside the bathroom. She could hear Tori's voice humming the tune of the instrumental now playing, and with a small smile coming to her face, the dark-haired girl took a seat, leaning against the door as she simply listened, mouthing the words when the singer's voice started up again.

It was an upbeat song, and a challenging one to sing. There was such a wide range of pitches that she was amazed how well Tori could keep up with them, hitting the notes, never flat. Even having attended a school full of amazingly talented performers for so long now, Jade couldn't help but feel invigorated by the sound of Tori's voice - of Cat's - of her own. She felt something close to a thrill when the three of them sang together, as they had for Christmas; it was just them. They were the only ones who mattered, for that time, no matter how short, no matter how unimportant. It was just a harmonic sound of their three voices combining to create something beautiful.

And it had been a while since she'd heard Cat sing, and although Tori could be caught singing just about any time, anywhere, there was something quietly spectacular about hearing her when the two of them were alone together, as if her voice was meant only for Jade's ears. And even here, with a door separating the two of them, Jade found that their voices fit so perfectly together.

When had she started singing out loud?

The song ended, and Tori had stepped out of the shower and was at the door, having been listening to the girl outside of it, (though leaving the water running, causing Jade to think she was still in the shower.) She stood there by the door for a moment with a large, unrestrained smile on her face.

"You could've told me you were here," she said, and she listened as Jade scrambled against the wooden door to get to her feet. "I would've gotten out for you."

The closeness of the girl's voice had surprised her, and as she leaned against the wall, she couldn't help but feel a thrill come over her at the image of Tori's naked form on the other side of the door.

"No, go ahead and finish," she replied, and a grin came over her face when she heard the lock click after a slightly hesitant silence.

After a moment, she heard the shower curtain close again, and Jade quietly turned the doorknob. Opening the door slowly, she held her breath, unsure of what she might find; but all she could see was a plume of steam rising from over the curtain and between the edges and the walls.

She took a seat at the stool Tori had set up for her morning makeup routine, (which, honestly, she didn't need at all - the girl could have dirt and mud in her hair and on her face and still look like some kind of unworldly goddess,) and began to shift through the drawers idly. She heard an excess of water dropping to the floor, and turning to face the curtain, she said, "What kind of shampoo do you use?"

Tori gave a snort. "Herbal Essences. Nothing special."

Jade's lips curved into a wide smile as she replied, "It smells _great._"

Tori was rinsing the shampoo from her hair as she laughed, trying not to allow that heat she'd felt earlier that day to come over her again. After she worked all the stuff out of her hair, she reached for the conditioner, which was sitting on the edge of the tub behind the curtain. Without thinking it through, she opened the curtain only slightly, but it was enough to allow Jade a peak at her from behind it. Tori's eyes caught sight of the dark-haired girl's smile, and immediately, she shut the curtain to the shower, and the half-empty conditioner bottle went flying.

"Are you _teasing me_, Vega?" Jade's voice came over the sound of the running water.

"I don't - no, I wasn't!" Tori had become flustered over what had just happened, although at most, Jade had only seen what she'd felt earlier that day. The sensation going through her veins was still hot like fire, causing her cheeks to turn into a deep shade of red, and although she knew Jade couldn't see her now, she felt as though the girl's eyes were boring holes into her skin.

"Don't be so prude, Tori." Her voice almost a purr, and Tori could feel her drawing nearer as her shadow appeared from behind the curtain. "Besides... I'm sure you look fine."

Tori was hiding her face in her hands, turned so that she was facing the corner of the shower. She was nervous; yes, she'd unlocked the door. She'd wanted things to go further and she'd wanted things to start moving between them again, because _God_, earlier that day. . . Jade had made her feel so damn _good_, and she had still been fully clothed.

The next words that came from Jade's mouth were hesitant, as if she had carefully thought over it. And with her voice low but genuine, she said to her through the shower curtain, "You really are beautiful, you know."

This was one of those fleeting moments where Tori got a look at a part of Jade that was rarely exposed - especially to her. Normally, Jade had her walls up, her defenses at the ready, and she was some sort of untouchable force that, as far as the brunette knew, only Beck could reach. And even then, she'd seen what had become of them as a couple; fighting, screaming at each other in front of their friends, until finally, Jade had given him that single chance. And, although Trina had delayed him, he'd had the choice, and he'd made the decision to let her go.

But here she was now, her feelings now wide open to the girl now covering herself in the shower as though she were afraid that Jade wouldn't like what she saw.

"Jade," Tori said, and with her hands gripping the side of the curtain, she closed her eyes and ripped it open.

Nothing happened but the chill of the outside air enveloping her wet skin.

When she opened her eyes, she found that Jade was about to close the door to the bathroom.

"Wait," she called, stepping out of the tub to go after her. The closing of the door stopped, and immediately the brunette went to cover herself. When Jade glanced backward at the girl, Tori caught the slightest of smiles on the girl's lips. "I just..."

"Just what?" Jade asked almost playfully, turning to face her. Tori grabbed a towel from off the counter using the hand which had covered her breasts, and as the dark-headed girl got a good look at what she'd been feeling up that morning, she couldn't help but allow the smallest of smirks to overtake her features.

Tori covered herself with the towel, and sighing, she said, "Don't leave without me."

"You coming back to school?" she asked, her eyes inspecting the girl's legs, exposed by the short width of the towel. "Finish up and get dressed, then. I'll be downstairs."

She moved out of the room, closing the door behind her, and Tori just about sank to the ground.

Finally, the opportunity to show some sort of confidence - some sort of desire - had been thwarted by her own inhibitions, and as she stepped back into the shower, she couldn't help but swear at herself for being such a coward. She wanted to tell herself that Jade would like what she saw; the girl had even told her she was beautiful, that she would look fine, and in her own way, that she could never hate what Tori had to offer. And still, she had found that she was still too scared to take this step forward, and again, she found that she expected Jade to what she so desperately wanted for her.

So this wasn't just a thing of morality - it was a thing of trust.


	4. Part Four

**Disclaimer;**

Looks like I still don't own Victorious.

**Warnings;**

This fanfiction contains femslash - Jade and Tori. This fanfiction is rated M for a reason. If you don't like the pairing or mature content, kindly do me a favor and don't read this.

**Author's Note;**

Back again with another update.

This one was delayed - I've been having to focus on my own personal projects. Then, after having written most of what you see here now, my hand got seriously jacked up, and I'm unable to use my right hand to type or do most anything at the moment. So, unfortunately, this chapter is a little short.

However, I decided I'd do one last update before I have to completely disappear for a few weeks. Part five is planned out, and as soon as I'm able to write again, I'm hoping to make up for my lack of progress. Things will be explained, and new things will happen. Spoiler alert: _I do not intend to disappoint._

You are all too great - I don't care if you don't favorite or do anything I can see. Just you reading this makes me incredibly grateful. It makes me happy that there are people out there who're reading this and (hopefully!) liking it. If you'll be patient a little longer, I'll be back to updating more often with chapters more satisfying.

And with that, I hope you enjoy part four.

**Can't Stop**

_Part Four_

The vision that crept into her mind of the day's earlier events seemed almost surreal.

There she was, in the janitor's closet of her school, pinned to the wall by the dark-headed predator she was beginning to become entirely too fascinated with. She could still feel hot breath on her neck, a ghost of the girl's fingers sweeping over her, causing her skin to ache and her mind to wander into fantasies far from innocent. She couldn't help that she enjoyed the feel of, well, getting felt up by the completely shameless hands of the girl that she knew so desperately wanted all of her then and there.

It felt absolutely, fantastically filthy, and she couldn't shake the feeling that things were only going to go further down the line than where things stood now.

Even with Jade avoiding her eyes from across the hallway, she knew that the girl was watching her when her own eyes went back to what she was doing. Tori could feel that gaze - cold, _scrutinizing _- on her back, and she knew her every movement was noted. As the brunette shoved her phone into her purse, she could feel the other girl's presence coming closer, and as she shut her locker and turned to face her, she was instead greeted by a lively little redhead standing about three feet before the current center of her attention.

"Tori," came Cat's voice in a near whine. "Are you coming over tonight?"

Tori blinked. "Coming over?"

The shorter girl gave her a rather confused look as she took a step closer to her, and Tori watched as Jade's face skewed into an expression that could only be described as a snarl before throwing her bag over her shoulder and storming off.

"Yeah. . . Our project is due tomorrow," Cat continued, her head cocked to the side now.

"Oh, right," Tori said, her eyes following the dark-haired girl that was now rounding the corner of the hallway. Honestly, she didn't have the slightest idea what kind of project was expected from them - and she didn't quite remember agreeing to work with Cat on anything - but at this point, she realized she had been too busy being distracted by the her latest (_strongest_) infatuation.

"Well?" Cat said, and the brunette looked back to her to find that the girl's eyebrows were slightly pressed, (as if she was concerned.) When Tori gave her a look of near confusion, the little redhead whined, "Are you?"

"Right, I - _yes,_" she said, and when the smaller girl gave an excited squeal and grabbed the other by her hands, Tori continued, "I'll be there at five!"

They had continued chatting until it was time to head off to the last class of the day, and finally, Tori felt she could give a sigh of frustration.

No, she hadn't planned on being at Cat's that night; that's not to say she didn't like her little airy friend, but as of late, she'd had other things on her mind. How couldn't she? Jade - incredibly beautiful, dark, _dangerous_ Jade - had felt her up on more than one occasion. But even now, with the hope of finally getting to feel those slender hands on her again that night lost to an assignment she hadn't even bothered to remember, she couldn't help but wonder what Jade had thought when she'd seen her with her bestfriend.

Or were they really bestfriends anymore?

x-x-x

Cat's room was obnoxiously bright and incredibly _pink._

Tori sat on the edge of her bed as the little redhead began to dig through the pile of things she'd laid on her desk just across the room. Although the room looked clean (most likely only an illusion that the stark brightness of the room gave off,) there were things strewn about it, from her clothes lying in piles across the floor to the unorganized mass of papers and pencils that were spread haphazardly over the top of her little white desk.

Cat was going on about something that the brunette had tuned out several minutes ago, and Tori found that she kept checking her phone, (as if it wouldn't go off if she left it alone.) It was a rather distracting game; she raise her eyes up to Cat when the redhead looked her way, give a "mhm" or "yeah" when it seemed appropriate, and then go back to looking at her phone - which, of course, had zero messages and zero missed calls.

"-And Andre said he thought so, too," Cat finished before giving a sound that came more as a squeal than anything else. As she turned around, Tori saw that she was holding a rather tattered sheet of lined paper with the words, "Cat and Tori's Project" neatly drawn in bubbly-looking letters with several hearts and stars scribbled around the font. "Found it!"

Tori had absolutely no idea what was written on the paper, although Cat had insisted that they had both come up with the idea in Sikowitz' class, (as he had, again, been running late due to some crazy circumstance that only _he _could find himself in.)

It came as a surprise to her when Cat sat down on the bed beside her and shoved what was nothing more than a blank piece of paper with their names drawn in a fancy hand at the top. She turned it over in her hands and looked for notes or words or _anything_, and the back came up blank as well.

"Uh, Cat," she said rather hesitantly, "there's nothing on this."

"Yes there is!" the smaller girl replied, pointing to the names at the top.

"But -" Stopping herself, Tori sighed, handing the paper back and rubbing a hand over her forehead before falling backward to lie on the bed.

After looking over the brunette for a moment, Cat gave a large, toothy smile and copied her, landing back on the hot pink comforter of her bed in a fit of giggles. Tori looked to her for a moment, and as usual, she wondered what was going on inside that pretty little head of hers - but when the red-haired girl turned to her, she had to look elsewhere, as though she couldn't honestly stay frustrated with the girl if she were to stare into those big, clueless brown eyes.

"What's wrong?" Cat asked, rolling over so that she was on her side and facing her friend.

For some reason, Tori became painfully aware of their closeness, and immediately she thought of Jade - and she was sure that the blue-eyed girl would be rather upset if she saw the two of them lying together on a bed only those few inches apart.

But having thought on it for more than an acceptable few seconds, Tori sat up, muttering the words, "Nothing, I'm fine." She shifted slightly so that she was farther away from the other girl and now sitting on the very edge of the bed, and Cat was almost offended by the movement.

"You've been acting weird."

Tori blinked. Now, why did _this_ sound familiar?

"I'm not - I mean, I don't think -"

"Yes, you have," Cat said, and the brunette was surprised by the lack of the normal dizzy whine in her voice. "You've been showing up to class late, and you're being really quiet, and. . ." The girl's words trailed off as she looked off somewhere beyond the room they sat in, as though trying to come up with the words to say to the girl before her. "It's like you're far away."

"Far away," Tori repeated, as though testing the words.

It was true. Subconsiously, she had been slipping away from her normal life; she had been in the company of her friends less and less, texting them less, and yes, she'd been late for (and often completely skipping) class more times than she cared to count. As she sat there, it seemed as though these things were beginning to pile up, as though the realization was finally hitting her - she really had been completely and totally caught up on the one girl in her life that she had come to feel so much for.

And apparently, the effects of her obsession hadn't gone unnoticed by her friends.

Beck knew - but that was Beck. Intelligent, socially adept Beck. Honestly, Tori wasn't surprised when he'd let her know how he felt about the situation, but now that she was being told she wasn't being herself by Cat, who wasn't on the same level as Beck, (or, so she had thought,) she was beginning to think that the others in the group were seeing what was going on.

Pushing those thoughts aside, her mind came to a rather important question - just how much did Cat know?

"You and Jade are both just being weird," Cat continued, breaking the silence that had lingered between them for the past few moments.

Tori's heart stopped cold.

The brunette composed herself quickly before the girl turned back to her, and with a bit more quickly than she would have liked, she asked, "What's Jade been doing?"

Cat shook her head, looking down at her hands, the fingers interlaced. She gave a sound that came close to a whimper, and as Tori looked over her face, she realized that she had never seen the girl as honestly and deeply upset as she was in that moment.

"She won't answer my calls," she started, her voice rather shakey, "and she's only answered, like, one of my texts. I can tell she's ignoring me, but I - I don't know why. . ."

The taller girl felt a harsh pain hit her chest.

So Jade had been neglecting some people as well.

"I'm sorry." The words escaped Tori's lips before she'd had the chance to catch them.

Thankfully, Cat took them as a sign of sympathy, and immediately, the redhead went on to tell her friend everything that she had missed in the past few weeks, although Tori was sure that she had heard it all before, (as vague and as distant as it seemed in her memory.)

They never worked on their project.

x-x-x

Tori had left Cat's house only a few minutes earlier. She was making her way down the street, dialing her sister's number, (which kept going straight to voicemail,) when suddenly, a dark car pulled up next to her on the street.

The brunette swallowed down the lump that had risen in her throat, facing forward as she continued her way down the street, though her eyes shifted left and right to look for anyone around. The car continued keeping pace beside her, and after only a moment, Tori was quietly panicking.

A loud and rather angry voice errupted from the now-open window of the vehicle.

"Get in!"

Immediately, Tori turned and opened the door of the car, landing in the seat heavily as she slammed the door behind her. Sitting in the driver's seat adjacent to her was Jade, who, as angry as she had sounded, was looking rather pleased with herself.

"You didn't recognize my car," she said, her lips finally succumbing to a large smile. "I thought you were going to cry."

"It's dark, and yes, I was about to!" Tori snapped back, casting her a cross look before quickly turning to the window to watch the world that was now beginning to slowly pass by them.

Jade looked over her for a moment; she could tell that she had flustered her, and where as normally she would have been beyond entertained by this, she couldn't help but feel a tinge of guilt for having scared her like that. After all, it was dark, and this was LA, (albeit the rather nice part,) but obviously she had managed to scare the hell out of the girl.

When the image of the girl next to her standing with Cat came into her mind, however, the feeling immediately passed, and her lips were once again pursed into a slight frown.

"So how's Cat?" Jade asked, her eyes focused on the road ahead of her. There was a hint of bitterness in her words that Tori caught immediately, although it was subtle in the way that the dark-haired girl seemed to speak to her at times when they were alone - but Tori had learned to sense the malice in her voice even when she said so much as a compliment to someone.

"She's worried," she said after a moment, casting her gaze over to Jade, who immediately tore her eyes from the road. Their eyes met for a moment, and for the first time in a while, Tori didn't feel any form of excitement as they looked to each other in silence. "She's worried about us."

"_She knows_?" Jade's eyes were back on the rather empty street as she spoke this time, as she knew she couldn't hide the anxiety beginning to brew within her.

"No, I -" Tori sighed, running a hand through her hair for a moment. "I don't know. She didn't say anything about _us;_ just that we're acting weird."

"Oh," the dark-haired girl said, and there was an obvious tone of relief in her voice.

Jade knew about this. She realized that she was doing things she shouldn't be doing - slacking off in her classes, spending less time with people. . . doing things with Tori that she couldn't quite say were completely harmless. Feeling her up in the janitor's closet wasn't exactly the wisest of ideas, or even in her own living room, (as she was aware her mother was already displeased with her having been overtly physical with her boyfriend - God knows what she'd have to say if she'd walked in on her nearly devouring a _girl_.) Anyone could have seen them at school if they had so much as looked through the window to the closet, and she wouldn't have been surprised it a passerby or two had heard Tori earlier that day. That could affect her in more than a dozen ways - if someone had spread word, not only would her parents find out and quite possibly _murder_ her, she could be expelled from Hollywood Arts - and that was _not_ an option. Being booted out of the school could easily and quickly put an end to her career and furthermore her ambitions. And then Tori, too, would lose all of that, (although honestly, she was sure that the brunette hadn't worked even _half_ as hard as she herself had at getting to where she was now.)

But aside everything physical they had been doing and the dangerous consequences that these actions entailed, there was something that seemed even more impossibly wrong. This whole spontaneous and absolutely unnatural _thing_ between them seemed to be more than just a bad idea.

With Cat, it had been different, (so she told herself.)

They had been close friends for over three years before they had so much as laid a finger on each other, and with the two of them, (their actions becoming more bold, words more affectionate,) things had just clicked so inexplicably _easily._ There hadn't been a reason this all happened; she was with Beck, and though things had been a little rough, what happened between them had been a long time coming. And on that night where she had finally let her guard down, things fell into place without much thought or effort. It just _happened._

And then there was the girl beside her - Tori Vega. This was the girl that not six months ago she was sure she could take a baseball bat to her knees, and yet, only a few hours earlier in the day, she had found herself kissing her so passionately and whole-heartedly that she could hardly tear herself away when she realized just how loud she was being. How had that even happened - how was it even _possible_ to go from hating someone with every ounce of your being to being so goddamned _romantic_ with them?

It wasn't possible, she told herself. She didn't feel anything for her - or. . . she _shouldn't_ feel anything for her. That wouldn't be right. This was completely, undeniably sexual, and it was all for the sake of pride and revenge and physical satisfaction. And still, it was as though some malevolent, unholy force was pushing her further into a territory far more dangerous than any she had found herself before. She could in no way describe this bond between them as "friendship," and there was no way in hell that she was ever going to call it "love."

No, this was something different entirely. There would never be anything between them that she could come close to calling healthy or typical, platonic or romantic. The thoughts she had about her would never again be innocent. More unsettling was her lack of thought and judgement when she found herself alone with the girl. It was as if something twisted and sick came over her, and once again she was the dark-haired animal who had the intention of ravaging her prey senseless. When she became this way, she couldn't help but feel the absolutely burning _need_ to bring the other girl to her knees, physically, mentally; to have her ready to submit with only the snap of her fingers, and begging for more when she did.

Tori was her way out of feeling powerless, and she was determined that this was all she would ever be.

But there was a part of her that didn't want things to be that way.

She was pulled from her thoughts when she saw the sign for the old highway that was hardly ever used. It went on for miles and miles through nothing but vast, open land, and at this time of night, when the sun had only just set and the half moon above them shone unobscured in the darkening violet sky, it was beyond beautiful. She knew it would calm her nerves to go for a drive on one of her favorite highways, and without saying a word, she flipped her turn signal and turned onto street that lead to the desolate road.

Tori gave her a confused look. "Where are we. . .?"

"Relax," Jade said as the girl's voice trailed off. "We're just going the fun way."


	5. Part Five

**Disclaimer;**

Victorious still isn't mine.

**Warnings;**

This fanfiction contains femslash - Jade and Tori. This fanfiction is rated M for a reason, as I've stated before - fair warning right here. If you don't like the pairing or mature content, kindly do me a favor and _don't read this_.

**Author's Note;**

Part five is here!

If you don't like mature/adult content, please skip this chapter; I'll get you up to speed in the next one if you miss anything.

Well, it took a while, but I'm back again, and feeling much better. My hand finally healed up a few weeks ago, but it took me a while to get back to being able to type normally for longer amounts of times. But thank you for the good vibes and "get better" wishes! They made me feel much better.

I'm not going to give any spoilers, but we're finally getting to the point in this story that I had originally intended this fanfiction to be about. There will be something recurring, as there has been before; but perhaps this one won't be quite so obvious.

It feels good to be back, and as usual, I just want to say thank you to all of ya'll. You guys make every day that much better for me. Anyway, enough of the sappy stuff and my unbearable rambling; let's get to the femslash.

I hope you enjoy part five.

**Can't Stop**

_Part Five_

If Tori hadn't been able to trust Jade before, she was learning to at that very moment.

The road was long and old and completely desolate, with only the rubble of some old abandoned building lying a few hundred feet from the road about three miles in. Beyond it, it seemed as though the life of LA was completely behind them, and there was nothing out here that could disturb or interrupt their drive.

There was very little green, all for the sparse vegetation that was scattered almost haphazardly across the rolling landscape, dotting it with darkness against the half moon that shone down on the earth from a clear and cloudless sky. The headlights of Jade's car showed just how old and mottled the road was, although her car drove smoothly and effortlessly over every bump and crack.

Jade had turned on the radio so that it played softly and quietly as they drove along, and Tori found that she couldn't help but stare out the window as the scenery went by; vast and endless and seemingly empty, although there was certainly life out there that she wasn't able to see. When she felt something looking at her, however, she turned to find that Jade was intently looking over her - the way she sat there with her head propped up on her heel of her hand, her eyes and mind obviously elsewhere.

But now that Tori was staring back at her, the girl couldn't help but give a small smirk as she turned back to the road. In a voice that could only be described as a purr, she asked, "Wanna see something cool?"

The brunette looked over her briefly, as if pondering exactly what she was going to do, (and weighing in the possible consequences if it was something absolutely terrifying,) and she nodded and gave a quiet "sure" before sitting up straight in her seat.

Jade's grin grew wider across her lips, and her left hand reached down to the switch just beside the steering wheel. She turned it, and suddenly the headlights of her car were shut off.

Tori felt as though she was going to be sick; the thought of crashing in total darkness made her stomach clench, and she couldn't help but grab onto Jade's sleeve. However, a few moments later, her eyes began to adjust to the darkness, and instead she found that she could see the world in an almost surreal light. The road was pale and silver, surrounded by a vast gray-golden sea on either side with dark shadows jutting up from their surface, and it traveled on and on before merging with a deep and mesmerizing violet sky.

And she could see Jade, who was smiling softly to herself as she watched the road before them.

"This is amazing," Tori said quietly, and the dark-hair girl gave something close to a snort. "How did you know you could do this?"

"I told you I like driving at night," Jade said with a thoroughly delighted grin. Jade's blue eyes darted down and caught sight of Tori's hand still lightly clenching the sleeve of her shirt, and with her smile slowly becoming softer, (more thoughtful,) she looked back to the road. "It's pretty great."

She drove like this for about another mile before she began to slow her car, convinced they were far enough from the city limits to be seen, much less approached, by anyone looking for trouble, (or by whoever owned this barren land, if anyone really even did.)

Jade pulled the car over and off the road about ten yards before she turned the key in the ignition and the engine died with a slow rumble. Tori, again, was giving her a quizzical glance, and when the dark-haired girl caught her eyes, she couldn't help but stare into them. Brown wasn't the most extraordinary color, Jade had thought, but when they were as deep and as enticing as Tori's (and Cat's - who she was deliberately pushing out of her thoughts for the time being,) she decided they were beyond compare.

"Come on," Jade said quietly, opening her door. She didn't bother to take the keys out of the ignition, as she decided there wouldn't be anyone out here to steal them, (as if anyone could really see them here in the darkness if they were wandering about.)

Tori followed her and watched as the blue-eyed girl took her place on the hood of her car, leaning back on it as she stared up into the sky. It was quiet, only the sound of a steady breeze sweeping around them, lightly brushing strands of wildly loose dark hair into Jade's face, which she pushed back with her beautifully thin fingers. She was quite possibly more stunning then ever, as if she belonged here in this cold and surreal world of night. Unlike the harsh brightness of the sunlight, which could expose every flaw that riddled one's physique, (if Jade even _had_ any at all,) the moonlight seemed to be more forgiving, highlighting only the beauty she had to offer. Her pale skin was luminescent, and her lips a stark contrast, dark and luscious, and Tori found her eyes stuck there, (at the mouth that was slightly parted as she took in the cool and breezy air,) rather than at all the other scenery that this girl's slight smile was putting to shame.

Yes, the girl decided, Jade West was quite possibly the most beautiful being she'd ever come across.

"See something you like?" Jade asked rather flirtatiously, and Tori finally realized she'd been staring for a bit too long.

The brunette moved so that she was facing her completely, leaning on her hand that was placed dangerously close to Jade's on the still-warm hood of the car, and looked over her. For a moment, the blue-eyed girl grew still, her breath catching and eyes darting away as Tori's lips curved into the smallest of grins.

"Yeah," she said, and the dark-haired girl's attention turned to her completely. "I do."

Jade felt her core grow warmer and then gave the other girl a smug look, her eyes traveling from her face and to her body. The shirt was low cut enough that she got an eyefull of cleavage, but the stretchy (tight-fitting) fabric was pink. _Pink_. She couldn't help but despise the color. It wasn't that it was too girly - it was that it was too bright. Too ordinary. No edge to it. She forgave the garment, as at this angle, with Tori slightly lower than she herself, she caught a good glance at what was underneath, and she couldn't help but feel a satisfying tinge of adrenaline and excitement come over her.

In a moment's time, Jade moved so that she was now pressing Tori's left shoulder, turning her so that her back was to the hood of the car. The brunette watched her, a familiar heat now showing obviously on her cheeks, as the dark-haired girl's hands snaked their way around her waist and found their place in the back pockets of her jeans once more. Jade, though silhouetted by the moonlight behind her, seemed to look more predatory than ever, her shape looming rather powerfully over the other girl, who's lips were parted as she drew in a sharp breath.

Jade leaned in, and taking in the girl's scent for a moment, she paused. Tori knew this was one of her challenges; a game she played as a way to say, "Prove to me you want this." And of course the brunette wanted it, and the blue-eyed predator before her was teasing her, making things so easy and yet so incredibly difficult.

But the thought quickly passed, and before Jade could so much as blink, Tori's hands reached up and cupped her face before crashing their lips together.

Jade gave a sound so close to a growl that it caused Tori to shiver, and having already taken the chance to slip her tongue between the other girl's teeth, the dark-haired girl began to fight for her dominance once more.

She leaned closer and closer still until Tori was forced back onto her hands on the car, and immediately her own clasped onto them, their fingers intertwining as Jade broke the kiss. Her lips traveled down until they met the side of the girl's neck, where she stopped and nipped only harshly enough to elicit a whimper from Tori's throat.

Tori leaned her head back to allow the girl more access to her throat, and once more Jade was suckling and nibbling on the soft, sensitive skin there, over the mark she'd left on her neck, (no longer hidden by the choker, which was lost somewhere in the back of her car,) and down to the collarbones exposed by the cut of the girl's shirt. The scent that came from the brunette's hair was beginning to stir up that feeling of hunger inside of her once more, and Jade couldn't help but feel that she wanted her, right there, right then.

It had only been a couple months, but it seemed like years. Jade desperately needed to be touched and to make someone feel good - to make herself their world, their escape. She wanted to be Tori's guilty pleasure, to make the girl want her almost as much as she herself wanted the brunette.

And still, as she moved one of her hands to slide under Tori's shirt, she heard her mind saying, "She's just your release."

Just her release. Something sexual, something to help her stay sane with those awful teenage hormones that coursed through her. That's all she would be.

She wouldn't make the mistake she'd made with Cat; she wouldn't develop feelings for her. She wouldn't be crushed when the girl decided to move on, and she'd concentrate on the moments like this when she was sure she was the only thing Tori could possibly want in the world, if only for this fleeting bit of time.

But she had a feeling in the pit of her stomach that she was going to get hurt in this either way.

Angrily, she pushed those thoughts aside, and her fingers formed claws against Tori's flat stomach, and smoothly (soft as the touch of a ghost,) she ran them down the skin there, beneath the thin material of her shirt and down to her jeans. She slipped her fingers beneath her jeans there, and Tori couldn't help but raise her head, her chin now resting on Jade's hair.

"Jade. . ."

Her voice had a questioning tone about it, and Jade understood why. Here they were, in the middle of the desert, and Jade was feeling her up outside the car where anyone could see. But who would see them? There was nobody here for miles and miles. Jade had tried things inside the car before, and she'd decided that they weren't nearly as fun as one might think.

"Nobody's here," the dark-haired girl murmured against her neck. "Relax."

Tori was in no position to argue, and she leaned her back against the car and placed a free hand in the other girl's hair.

Jade continued, sliding her hand down over what felt like silk, until she reached the wetness that had gathered there between her legs. Tori inhaled sharply, and almost subconsciously, she quickly but softly gripped the back of Jade's head, pulling her closer. She'd been there before; earlier in the janitor's closet, only this time, it was her fingers, and they were on the inside of her jeans.

The dark-haired girl's lips formed a smile against the bare skin of the brunette's neck. She had done this sort of thing numerous times before, but at the moment, her mind was focused on the girl beneath her touch. This was her first time to make someone else feel good - someone other than that redhead and her ex-boyfriend. She couldn't bring herself to even think about them, as she slipped her other hand from off Tori's and up to the hem of the girl's shirt.

As she drew her lips away from the brown-eyed girl's skin, she removed her hand from her jeans and tugged on the girl's shirt. Hesitantly, she lifted her arms, and Jade removed the garment, tossing it onto the hood of her car rather haphazardly. There was that pink bra again, and the dark-haired girl decided she didn't want to see much more of it. She reached her right hand around Tori, who stood awkwardly as she tried half-heartedly to cover herself, and unsnapped the bra in a moment's time with two fingers.

She was pretty good at that, Tori noticed.

Jade moved her hands so that they gripped Tori's wrists, and pulling them apart, she watched as the bra slid down exposed her chest. Releasing the girl, she pulled the pink garment off her and threw it somewhere to the side, not at all caring as it landed in the dirt, and looked over the girl in the light of the moon overhead.

She was gorgeous. She reached up and took them into her hands, feeling the nipples grow harder beneath her touch, and she couldn't help but relish in the amazing feel of them; a good size, firm but with such amazingly soft skin.

Tori gasped as she felt Jade's hands begin to massage them. The hands were cold against her newly exposed skin, and Jade's eyes moved up and settled upon the brunette's face, which burned bright red in the gentle light. Tori's eyes, half lidded, refused to meet Jade's, and the dark-haired girl shook her head as she silently leaned in and captured the brunette's lips once more, her hands still working the girl's breasts.

In her mind, Jade was only half in the moment; part of her was elsewhere, at some different time and place where she had been with someone else. It wasn't the first time she'd been with someone, but it certainly was a completely new and strange sensation - doing something so intimate out in the open, where anyone could see, with no walls to muffle the sounds they made. It felt almost as if God (or whatever was up there) could have looked down to find you there, with your back on the hood of his car and his hands touching you in places you thought only you would ever see.

Dirty. It felt dirty. And she remembered the feel of him against her, even now as she had the taste of someone new and different lingering in her mouth.

There came a muffled cry, and immediately Jade drew back. She looked over the girl before her quizzically, her eyes scrutinizing, as she saw Tori raise a hand to her lips to wipe away a small drop of red liquid that had begun to run down the side of her mouth.

"You bit me," the brunette said, sounding more than just slightly surprised. Jade arched a brow, running a tongue over her teeth and registering the metallic taste of blood in her mouth. Slowly, a small smile came to her face, and she moved back toward the girl, pressing her back and against the car with just enough force to cause Tori to gasp.

Once more, she was on her, like some sort of animal starved for the taste of the girl's skin. She was leaned over her completely, one hand placed on the car beside Tori's shoulder and the other pinning the girl and keeping her bent back and onto the warm surface. Jade's lips quickly found a spot on her collarbone, where she sucked and nipped at the skin there feverishly.

The brunette lifted her head to watch, but the angle at which she was flexed over the hood of Jade's car strained her neck, and immediately she lowered her head back once more, her eyes looking instead up to the sky. There was still a sense of panic at the pit of her stomach that threatened to rise, (and it had already escalated severely at the feel of Jade's teeth piercing the skin of her lower lip.)

She had never thought her first time would be like this - she'd never even imagined she'd _ever_ do it like this. And yet, here she was, her back against a car as the girl that she'd become so infatuated with began to take her, right there, in the middle of the desert.

Tori was suddenly brought back to reality when she felt the girl's mouth coming dangerously close to where her hands had been only minutes before. The feel of Jade's tongue swiping over the soft and sensitive skin of her breast made her shudder, and immediately her hands reached for the girl's hair instinctively.

Jade smirked against her skin, placing a kiss there at the top of her breast, before she opened flicked her tongue out and right over the girl's hardened nipple. Tori made a sound close to a whimper, her body jumping as the warm, wet muscle came into contact with the place that she so desperately wanted touched. The blue-eyed girl had touched her there before, but much to the brunette's surprise, it was something different entirely when Jade used her tongue.

Her tongue began to work over the hardened little peak, and Tori couldn't help but let out soft sighs with every stroke over the center. Jade took it into her mouth, and suddenly the brown-eyed girl's body jumped, her chest pressing into the girl's mouth as her hands gently gripped her closer by the hair, and Jade gave a muffled groan as she allowed her teeth to scrape over the girl's skin.

Even now, as her tongue began circling the girl's nipple as she sucked on it gently, Jade's mind was slipping off again.

It had done this with Beck and Cat as well; she couldn't be with one without thinking of the other, and how they would touch her, or how they would hold her or kiss her, and how different they both were from one another. And now, as she was with someone new, treading territory she knew she should be keeping well away from, she only thought of the two of them - and how, for once, she was only giving, not receiving.

Tori wasn't like Cat - aside from the way they both smelled of something delectable, she felt as though they showed nothing in common with one another. They were two different people on two completely different levels; and because of that, she couldn't gauge why her mind kept wandering back to the girl from what felt like too long ago.

Cat. Cat had been something else; that night all those months ago when she had finally made the first move, Jade had been prepared to keep her walls up. She didn't want to do anything to the girl that she'd end up regretting, or anything that Cat would end up regretting. For so long, fear had kept her from indulging in those fantasies she had long since harbored about the girl with the red velvet hair.

And even now, after everything she had once shared with Cat had seemed to have simply disappeared from existence to the redhead, she felt as though she couldn't regret any of the time she had spent with her.

And the memories made her sore.

As the dark-haired girl moved her mouth to press over the other breast, Tori felt as though Jade had completely detached from consciousness. She'd never been touched like this before, but the way Jade began become quieter against her, her hands and mouth working slower and softer, she couldn't help but feel as though the girl was almost mechanical in her movements, no want or need in them as there had been before; as if she wasn't there.

And she wasn't. As she tried to tear her thoughts away from the girl she would never have admitted to having feelings for, they were replaced with thoughts of her boyfriend - her _ex_ boyfriend, she reminded herself.

Jade told herself that she hated him - that she wanted something absolutely terrible to happen to him that would hurt him, (like he had crushed her,) if not completely kill him inside. She wanted him to suffer before he'd come back to her on his knees and tell her that he was sorry, and that he could do better with another chance if she'd take him. And in her mind, as the scene played out, she could see herself reaching up with her hand and taking his face into it as she smiled, her head shaking as she whispered the word almost inaudibly: "No."

It made her bitter knowing that her thoughts were thoroughly unrealistic.

There was a voice saying her name, and for the first time in several minutes, Jade stopped what she was doing and opened her eyes to find Tori looking down at her. Blinking, Jade removed herself from the girl's body, her eyes blatantly looking in any other direction they could find.

Tori gave a small, nervous smile, moving her arm to cover herself.

"If you don't want to do this. . ." she said, her voice trailing off.

"I do," Jade snapped, and immediately she realized just how defensively (and quickly) she'd said it. She shook her head for a moment, thinking over her words for a moment as she moved back toward the girl, her eyes closing. "I do."

The brunette stood there, watching as Jade moved to reach behind her and grab her shirt off the hood of her car before she pushed it into Tori's hands. For a moment, she was unsure what was going on; Jade looked as though she was angry, and Tori couldn't help but feel that panic rising in her once more.

"Come on," Jade said, moving over to the driver's side and opening the door. "We're going to my house."

Tori nodded, slipping on her shirt before she made her way to the passenger's side, and she couldn't help but notice the wetness that had gathered between her legs, (and the feeling made her rather uncomfortable as sat beside the girl.)

As soon as Tori was in, the car roared to life. Jade switched on the headlights and turned back toward the highway. In a few minutes' time, they were rolling back down the old, mottled road, the clock on the dash reading "11:35."

A few minutes later, Tori looked to Jade with a rather worried look.

"Did you pick up my bra?"

When Jade smiled and gave a quiet laugh, Tori knew she wouldn't be seeing it again.

x-x-x

As soon as Jade turned the lock to her bedroom door, she felt a familiar thrill rush through her, and immediately she turned to Tori, who, as accustomed as she was becoming to Jade's strange ways of advancement, was looking almost timid as she stood a few feet off in front of the pitch black comforter of Jade's bed.

And as the dark-haired girl came closer, Tori couldn't help but notice that in every way, the girl looked to be some sort of predator - the smooth, fluid sway of her hips as she came toward her, like a dangerous beast stalking, and the way those green-blue eyes seemed to come alight in what little illumination the clock on her dresser provided only reminded her of the glowing stare of an animal in moonlight. The brunette had come to the conclusion that out of the many things that she found herself becoming more enamored with about the girl, the attribute she was most attracted to was the sense of dominance that simply exuded from the girl.

With only inches between them, Jade couldn't help but revel in the feel of the warmth that seemed to radiate from Tori; perhaps she'd gone a little too far to simply stop in the middle of it all out there in the desert, but now that she had Tori in the privacy of her room, (where she felt that the girl would be slightly more comfortable, at the least,) she was over any regret she had previously felt. Her hands came up and found a comfortable place on her hips beneath the fabric of Tori's shirt, and with a smile that looked almost slightly insane, she leaned in and placed her lips on the brunette's.

Tori gasped in surprise, and instantly Jade's tongue was violating her. The brown-eyed girl immediately noticed the taste of her own skin mixed in with the flavor of whatever mint Jade had popped in her mouth on the way home, and for whatever reason, it made Tori feel impossibly dirty.

Jade lifted Tori's shirt, and their kiss broke only long enough for her to tear the garment off Tori's shoulders, only to land carelessly on the ground a few feet off, and as Tori moved to cover herself, the dark-haired girl pulled back on her hair with just enough force to cause the girl to yelp as her head followed Jade's grip. Immediately, Jade's lips found the soft, sensitive skin behind her jaw, and after placing her wet lips there, she softly scraped there with her teeth, (which caused Tori to shudder beneath her.)

Pulling her hand from Tori's thick hair, she took the girl's left breast into it, her other hand finding its way down to the waistband of her pants. Tori couldn't help but groan, and when she felt Jade's fingers slip under the silky garment beneath her jeans, her hips moved toward the touch instinctively.

Before she went any further, Jade removed her lips from Tori's neck and to her right ear. Her hand slipped lower still, the other now gently rolling the girl's nipple between her fingers. Finally, she touched the top of the girl's slit, and Tori began to feel that familiar throbbing stirring up between her legs.

"Already wet for me, Vega?" the blue-eyed girl murmured, her hot breath tickling Tori's ear. The sound of her voice, so low and soft and _sexy_, could've driven Tori crazy if the girl's hands weren't already thoroughly doing so. Breathlessly, she spoke some sound of concurrence, and Jade smiled with a quiet chuckle.

In one fluid movement, Jade's hands found the button to Tori's jeans and immediately had them undone. She pulled them down around Tori's ankles, and the girl (timidly) stepped out of them. Jade's eyes were immediately on her underwear. Pink. _Of course._ Rolling her eyes, she pulled them down as well.

Tori was taken aback by the quickness of it, and her hands instinctively went to cover herself between her legs. As she stood up once more, Jade pushed back on the girl's shoulders, and the brunette found herself stumbling back two steps before her thighs pressed against the dark, silky blanket that covered Jade's bed.

When she looked back to Jade, she found that the girl was already undressing - and she couldn't help but enjoy the eyefull she was now getting of Jade's chest. She'd often found herself staring at it before, as the girl wore shirts that quite simply showed off what she had, but now before her stood a topless girl who was moving to unfasten a black, lacy mesh bra. The burning feeling in her stomach seemed to double in temperature as Jade smirked back at her.

With the shift of her fingers, the bra was unhooked, and she slid the thing over her arms before tossing it to the side.

Tori had imagined her shirtless, but the real thing was more enticing than anything she could have ever envisioned. They were round and supple with two smaller, dark centers, and she felt the desire to reach out and take them into her hands as Jade came closer, simultaneously undoing the jeans around her waist. Only a foot before Tori, she stopped, capturing the brunette's gaze with her own. For a moment, she only looked down at her, the girl sitting so awkwardly on the bed before her, and with a small, smug grin on her face, she bent over and slid the jeans the rest of the way down before stepping out and kicking them somewhere across the room, leaving only a pair of mesh boyshorts that obviously matched her bra.

Tori didn't realize her eyes were lingering on the other girl's breasts until Jade let out a small laugh. Her face turning an even darker shade of red, the brunette tore her eyes away, looking instead to the newly exposed skin on her hips - and on the right side of her abdomen, where she guessed it could only be partly noticeable with only jeans, she found a set of foreign words written onto her skin there.

Before she could make out the exact text in the dim light of the room, Jade spoke.

"You can touch me, you know," she said, her voice sounding rather amused. Standing and still half-heartly attempting to cover herself, Tori put her hands on the girl's hips, (as Jade had done to her earlier,) although her eyes were quite obviously distracted by the girl's breasts.

Her hands faltered there, and the dark-haired girl could feel her trembling before her.

"Really," Jade murmured in a gentle tone, (although inwardly, she knew the sweetness had spawned from the need to get things moving,) "Just do what you like."

Tori nodded, letting out a breath as she finally reached up and ran her hands over Jade's breasts. Jade sighed and smiled, and the sound prodded Tori to continue, and she began to knead them gently, relishing the softness of her flesh and realizing just how different they felt from her own.

Growing slightly more confident, Tori leaned forward, her lips firmly pressing into Jade's, and the girl reacted immediately. The dark-headed girl's hands reached for Tori's hips, and in a rough movement, she tugged them closer to her own. Jade's hands slipped further behind the girl before finally she gripped her ass, squeezing it firmly with her fingers. The brunette let out a soft whimper, which was muffled by Jade's lips, and moved so that her hips were nearly touching the other girl's.

The blue-eyed girl lifted one of her hands and took Tori's in it, gripping it and moving it down her body until she held it at the waistband of her underwear. Tori's eyes opened as she removed her lips, only to find that Jade was already staring at her, a look of incredible primal hunger burning in her pale eyes.

She pressed Tori's hand lower still, until the girl's fingers touched her through the mesh material, and Jade's eyes softly lidded as she sighed something unintelligible. She was wet, and for some reason, this excited Tori, who began to press into her. The fingers of Jade's left hand squeezed the girl's ass harder, and the brunette found that this only caused the heat in her core to burn even hotter.

Tori moved her hand so that it slipped beneath the last garment left between them and slid lower until she reached the wetness that had gathered between Jade's legs. Jade arched into her in anticipation, and finally, Tori's middle finger brushed over her clit, where the dark-headed girl needed so desperately to be touched.

"_Shit,_" she hissed through clenched teeth as the brunette's finger began to trace circles over the hood. Tori's other hand began to play with the nipple of Jade's left breast, and the girl beneath her touch could only grasp onto her hips for support.

Jade knew she could be left satisfied in a matter of minutes, but with the girl before her already naked and quite obviously willing, she knew that she wanted to make things last much longer.

Pushing Tori's hips, she sat her back on the bed. The brunette released her, and Jade immediately felt her body ache to be touched again - but she immediately forced herself to push the feeling back in her mind and focused on the girl before her.

"Lay back," Jade said, and for a moment, Tori only watched her, cheeks burning and eyes wide.

It was her first time doing anything like this - and a few months ago, she would never have guessed that her first would be with a girl, much less Jade. _Jade_ - the girl who, for so long, had gone out of her way to make the the new girl's life a living hell. From day one, she was sure they would never get along; even now, as she sat completely naked before her, - _doing things_ with her - she couldn't be sure if they were actually "friends" or "girlfriends" or "frenemies" or anything more than what they had been all those months ago. She knew she wanted the girl; but in what way? It could have been something sexual - if it wasn't for the fact that she was beginning to enjoy the time she spent with her when nothing physical was happening. But that didn't mean she felt anything more than attraction.

Tori thought about none of this as she looked up at the pale, bare skin of the girl before her, completely fascinated by every move that was made.

Jade pushed back on her shoulders, and Tori laid back so that she was resting on her elbows, her knees bent over the bed and pressed together still.

The blue-eyed girl knelt so that she was before the girl, and with her hands, she pulled on the girl's legs gently, prodding her to open them for her. When Tori didn't comply, Jade shot her a look.

"Do you not _want_ me to?" she asked, the tone of her voice sharp and demanding.

Turning her face away, Tori took a sharp breath and parted her legs. The coolness of the air around her caused her to shake as it came into contact with the wetness between her legs, and as she opened her eyes to look to Jade, she found that the girl had a smirk on her face.

Tori shaved, and Jade couldn't help but prefer it to trimming - it just made things look better down there to her. Moving so that she was between the brunette's legs, Jade placed her hands on the sides of the girl's thighs. She began to stroke them softly, and she leaned in further to place soft, wet kisses on the sensitive skin on the inside of her left leg.

The other girl watched her through half-lidded eyes, and she began to feel an ache in her center. She needed Jade _there_, and she felt she would go crazy if she didn't get there soon.

As if Jade could sense this, she began to slow her administrations. Pausing only inches away from where Tori was soon to _beg_ for her to be, she began to suckle there, nipping as she ran her tongue over the wet skin. Her blue eyes shot up to Tori, who, rather than looking impatient or angered, looked as though she was in some great need. She smiled against the girl's skin.

"Tell me what you want me to do," she said, barely audible to the brunette above the beat of her heart.

Tori shifted beneath the girl's hands, letting out a soft whimper as she felt the ache growing more intense inside of her. Jade's brow quirked at the lack of a response, lashes fluttering as she gave a smug grin.

"What does Tori want?" she asked in a voice that sounded far to innocent to be genuine.

"Touch me there," Tori spoke, her eyes looking wherever else they could.

"Touch you _where_?"

Tori gave an exasperated sigh, closing her eyes. Jade laughed quietly, leaning forward and placing a kiss just above Tori's slit, causing the girl to jump beneath her.

"You're such a prude," the blue-eyed girl murmured against her skin. "It's almost cute."

Without further warning, Jade flicked her tongue over the girl's spread lips and Tori felt as though some sort of electric current had shot through her. Placing her hands on the girl's hips, she began to pay attention to the sensitive little bud, slipping her tongue over it gently before beginning to trace little circular motions over the hood.

Tori had never felt anything like it, and as Jade began to work more feverishly than before, she couldn't help but place a hand in her thick, dark hair, as if to support herself. The feel of something hot and wet sliding over a place so sensitive was more than foreign to her; it was genuinely, thoroughly amazing. In a voice barely above a whisper, she let out little cries, particularly when Jade's tongue flicked beneath the hood.

The blue-eyed girl's grip tightened on Tori's hips when they began to move toward her, as though to hold them in place, although she began to ride with her movements as if it was something natural to her, (and in a way, it was.) Her right hand removed itself from Tori's side and moved so that it was poised at the girl's entrance, and she ran her fingers around there, all the while keeping her tongue focused on her clit.

The brunette felt the new touch at her opening, and for a moment she panicked, thinking the girl would take her right then. She'd never had anything _in there,_ and she was aware that it would more than likely be at least slightly painful, (and as much as she was enjoying the girl's work right now, she didn't want anything to ruin it.)

The girl's fingers dipped inside, barely passing through her lips, and the strange sensation caused Tori to shudder. The grip she held on the girl's dark hair tightened, and Jade groaned something Tori could only guess was a swear into the girl's skin.

Jade parted her lips, and, as gently as she could manage, took the bud of nerves into her mouth, softly suckling on it and running her tongue over the exposed head. Tori's hips pressed closer to her mouth as she let out a low, throaty moan, her head leaning back as her eyes closed completely once more. Her left hand gripped the silky comforter beneath her as her legs began to shake with every flick of Jade's tongue, and once more, as she had felt in the janitor's closet earlier that day, there began to come a heat, growing from her core and spreading downward. It was white hot, like liquid fire coursing through her veins, and she began to rhythmically move her hips against Jade's hand and tongue.

"Oh _God_," she groaned, her voice sounding desperate and strained.

The dark-haired girl's blue eyes flickered up so that they stared at Tori. From the angle from which she looked, she saw the girl's head thrown back, her breasts moving as she ground against her touch. The light sheet of sweat that had begun to form over her body caused her to shine a strange light-red, illuminated by the glow of her alarm clock a few feet off.

The hand that rested on Tori's hip reached up and took her left breast, immediately pinching the nipple between her fingers. The brunette let out low cry at the sudden harsh sensation, but immediately her torso pressed itself toward her hand as well, and though her left hand still held her body halfway up for some sort of support, she felt as though the angle was straining her back, (and causing the feeling of burning alive to grow stronger within her.)

When Jade's teeth lightly scraped over her clit, Tori felt the need grow urgent, and suddenly, she was rising to a new level of heat.

"Jade. . ."

Her voice was pleading, and Jade removed her mouth. Hesitantly, Tori raised her head and opened her eyes, a pained look on her face, and found Jade's eyes staring back up at her, capturing her gaze and holding it. Her mouth was hung slightly open, and Tori could see her own slick on her lips and chin, causing the blush on her face to grow hotter and brighter.

Standing and removing her hand from between Tori's legs, she looked down at her for a moment, simply inspecting her work; the girl's chest was rapidly rising and falling, as she sat there gasping for the breath she didn't know she'd been holding, and her body looked as though it was burning, with the way the sweat covered her and the color of red from her clock and from the blood that had risen to the skin.

"Move back," she said, her eyes lingering on the girl's mouth, which was ajar as she gasped for breath.

After a moment, Tori complied, letting out a sharp breath when she felt the ache beginning to stir between her legs once more. Her head now rested more comfortably on one of Jade's pillows, eyes quizzical as she watched the girl at the end of the bed.

Jade slipped out of her underwear and wiped a wrist over her mouth before climbing onto the bed between her legs. She moved so that she was hovering over Tori, her breasts nearly touching the other girl's, her mouth only inches away from the thinly-shaped set of lips before her.

Her lips captured Tori's, and in an instant, the strange taste of herself filled the brunette's mouth. It was sharp and sweet, and for a moment, it caused her to feel gross - but the moment passed, and the feeling was immediately placed by an even higher _want_, which she hadn't known was possible.

The blue-eyed girl positioned herself over the other girl before pressing their bodies together. When Jade's hips pressed into her own, Tori couldn't help the low moan that escaped her throat, and immediately her hands found their place in the girl's dark hair.

"You like that?" Jade asked with a small laugh, pressing her hips further into Tori's.

"_Yes,_" she replied breathlessly, and at the sound of the girl's voice, quiet and small and _pleading_, the dark-haired predator came to life.

Jade moved so that her lips were at the side of Tori's neck, and she began to suckle the skin there. Her body moved so that their breasts slipped against one another smoothly (due to the light sheet of sweat that had gathered on Tori's body.) When their hips ground against one another, and Tori began to feel that much needed sense of relief once again, the brunette angled her hips and wrapped her legs around the girl above her. Jade felt Tori's skin slide over her swollen clit, and suddenly, she felt as though she was on fire.

"_Goddamnit,_" Jade hissed, and her back arched so that her center could press against the other girl's. Jade's hands, placed on each side aside Tori's breasts, formed claws, gripping the comforter below her as she raised her head and let out a loud groan at the new sensation building between her hips.

Tori's hands were on Jade's shoulder's now, lightly scraping the skin with her nails, (and further driving Jade _insane_.) The girl above her was grinding against her with abandon, and Tori only guessed that the girl was getting to that high that she'd come so close to before. She was moving back against her, and although the aching in her core had receded once more, the burning had not.

The blue-eyed girl was so near to finally finishing herself that she could no longer keep track of the thoughts running through her mind. Her eyes were tightly shut, so as to only feel the sensation growing between her legs. There were images of people she knew she shouldn't be thinking about - Cat and Beck. The memories of the times she'd done things like _this_ with them. The thoughts that had crossed her mind when Beck had taken her virginity resurfaced as she realized she was taking that of the girl who so desperately moved against her from below, and there was a slight sense of guilt that had accompanied her from the first time she'd been with the little redhead.

The thoughts moved so quickly through her psych that she was able to keep from dwelling on them, and finally, without much warning, her body convulsed in her release.

In a harsh, sudden movement, her hips slammed into Tori's, and she let out a moan that sounded more like a strangled cry than anything else. Her fingers could have tore holes into her comforter with the tightness of her grip pulling against it, but all she felt was that hot wave of sensation surging through her body, starting at her clit and moving it's way outward and all the way through her limbs.

Tori laid beneath her, watching as Jade's lips trembled as she whispered three or four times, "_oh God,_" her body shaking.

She didn't know exactly what Jade had just gone through, but she knew she wanted to feel it as well.

Jade moved so that she was beside Tori and collapsed onto her side, gasping for breath now. Her eyes still closed, she placed her left hand on the brunette's stomach and worked her way down, until her shaking fingers found Tori's slit once more.

The brunette shifted beneath her, enjoying the feel of the girl's hand, but as she looked to Jade, who was, for once, _sweating_, she became aware that her release had taken a lot out of her.

"Jade," she began quietly, gasping when the girl's finger slipped over her, "you don't -"

"Just... hold on," Jade breathed, brows pressed in slight annoyance. _You'll get yours._

A few moments passed like this, until the blue-eyed girl shakingly sat up and moved between Tori's legs once more. Bending so that her mouth was parallel to the girl's lower abdomen, Jade took in the scent of sex that permeated from her. Her body was so thoroughly exhausted that it didn't cause much of a stir, but the desire to get Tori there drove her, and she began to place hot, breathless kisses down the girl's stomach.

She knew that Tori had been close when she'd originally left off, and without any further delay, she ran her tongue up the girl's slit with just enough pressure to cause the brunette to buck when it came into contact with her clit. Tori's left arm raised over her head, her hand gripping the pillow behind her, while her other found its place back in Jade's hair.

Jade opened her mouth and began to suck on the girl's clit, less gently than before, her tongue moving rougher and faster. Tori let out a moan, the sound loud enough to cause Jade's eyes to shoot up toward her; as far as she knew, her mother wasn't home, (and she would have heard Jade's cry before _this_,) but the sound was so helpless and weak and _hot_ that she couldn't help but watch the girl's body as she began to whimper more softly.

While her left hand was wrapped around Tori's thigh, her right moved so that it was once more at the girl's entrance, only this time, she pressed further - and was met with resistance. _She really is a virgin,_ she thought almost absently as her tongue slid over the girl's clit once more. Her right hand reached under the brunette and gripped her ass, her fingers squeezing it harshly as she continued.

For a third time, Tori felt that heat rising in her core once more, only this time faster and even more brutal than before. She heard her cries grow louder, and as her hand pressed down on Jade's head, she felt as though she was about to explode. The feeling flooded through her abdomen and lower, lower until she felt her toes curl.

She was nearing something incredible, and all she found she could do was call out for God and keep her hips moving against the girl's mouth.

Jade squeezed her ass harder until there were little crescent nail marks embedded into her skin, and flattening her tongue, she dragged it over that little sensitive spot, her eyes still placed on Tori, who's head was thrown back against the pillow behind her.

_Come for me,_ Jade silently thought to her, and as if on cue, Tori finally felt what she'd been longing for.

It rapidly came over her, sharp and electric and _sensational_ as it rushed in a wave over her body. Her back arched off the bed, her right moving and gripping the blanket below her, (and saving Jade's hair.) A loud, unrestrained moan escaped her throat, followed by softer little whispers that came almost as praise to the girl between her legs, and for a few moments, she stayed like that.

Finally, she felt herself coming down from the high, and her body simply became deadweight. She tiredly laid down once more, her body quivering as Jade moved beside her once more.

Minutes passed in silence, all for Tori's breath and the little gasping sounds she made every so often. Jade only watched her, entranced by the way her name would occasionally slip quietly from Tori's mouth, as if asking for some sort of assurance.

However, the dark-haired girl was beginning to feel unsure of herself. Finally, they'd done it - broken down that last wall that stood between them. They had done things that Jade had only done with two others - and for Tori, it had been her first time. And it had been _amazing._

But as the girl moved and curled into Jade's chest, her head tucking away and warming the blue-eyed girl's collarbone with every breath, she knew that something wasn't quite between them. It was beginning to stir a sick feeling in her stomach, and the fact that Tori was so easily pressed against her now only unsettled her further, although she absently began to run a hand through the girl's brown hair.

Glancing over at the clock just behind Tori, she nearly swore. 3:07AM.

She didn't bother to tell Tori that they'd have to be ready for school in less than five hours, as she honestly didn't know if she'd be able to wake up by then. Jade didn't care if they missed school that day, or the day after that, or if the girl's mother ended up coming to knock on her door to see if her daughter was there (if Mrs. Vega even knew where she lived.)

None of that concerned her at the moment.

What worried her was that she'd come to the conclusion that she was beginning to feel more attached to the girl lying beside her.


	6. Part Six

**Disclaimer;**

I don't own Victorious. _Dang._ I'd make some ladylovers out there pretty happy if I did, though.

**Warnings;**

This fanfiction contains femslash - Jade and Tori. It's rated M and for a reason. (Girl on girl lovin' abound.) If you're not into this kind of thing, it's cool, but please don't read this.

**Author's Note;**

Part six is (finally) here.

You could say I got sick, or that it just got worse. I've also just been caught up with starting college and getting more hours at my job as well as trying to get healthy again. So first off, I apologize for the delay. I sat and wrote on this when I could, and I know where everything's supposed to be going; I just haven't had the patience to write as much as I'd like, (and all that needs to be done.) But now that I have a laptop instead of having to sit at a desktop, (which I was and still am just too weak to do for more than a few minutes,) I'm hoping to get more done.

Updates may be a little farther in between until my health gets a bit better and schedule even out, but I'm going to make sure every update I make is worth it, and write everything that needs to be said in each chapter. I want this story to progress, not sit at a standstill; I have too much to say before it ends.

Also, thank you for your reviews, kind messages, favorites; everything. Every time I get one, I honestly just want to give you a hug, weird as that may sound; it just makes my day. But seriously; with all sincerity, I thank you for your support.

Let's get to going.

**Can't Stop**

_Part Six_

It was half past ten when there came a knock on Jade's door.

It was Tori who awoke to the sound of a soft rapping on the wood; she stirred beneath the comforter that she hadn't recalled pulling over herself and raised her head, looking around. For a moment, she was startled - it wasn't her bed, and it certainly wasn't her room, (filled with dark things and jars of items that she didn't care to question anyone about, as she didn't want to know.) When she heard a slight murmur come from the girl beside her, she turned to her, and looking over the mess of dark tangles that covered her shoulders and the pillow she rested her face on, Tori began to remember what all had happened the night before.

The sound of a louder knocking and the call of Jade's mother's voice brought her back to reality, and immediately, she felt herself begin to panic.

As much as she hadn't wanted to wake her a moment before, she began to nudge the girl beside her, shaking her shoulder rather violently. As she had come to realize in Yerba, Jade could sleep through damn near anything - including the war that had been raging on the island country they'd been visiting. Obviously, it would take a bit more than "a gentle touch" to rouse her from her slumber.

"_Jade_," she whispered sharply, finally pulling on her shoulder and rolling her over. The dark-haired girl groaned something nearly inaudibly before moving herself toward the brunette, her arm stretching itself over the girl's waist. Tori pressed on her again, and this time, closer to her ear, she hissed, "Wake up!"

Jade's eyes opened, and with an obvious look of annoyance on her face, she glared daggers at the girl who was half-sitting up next to her. When the expression turned to one of amusement, Tori remembered she was naked, and she proceeded to pull the covers up over her chest.

"Jade," came the voice from the other side of the door, sounding impatient and obviously unhappy. "Are you going to school today or not?"

"_Shit_," Jade spat in a hushed whisper, looking over at her alarm clock. "I thought she was at work!"

"Well, answer her!" Tori said quietly, pressing her shoulder.

The dark haired girl gave Tori a pointed look before she complied.

"No, I don't feel good," she called back in a groan that sounded too practiced to not be.

Her mother gave a sigh, and there was a silence for a moment, the two girls looking at each other.

"Well, I'm not going to be here. Can you take care of yourself?"

Jade couldn't help but snort at that - as if her mother was _ever_ there to take care of her in the first place. Shaking her head, she replied, "Yeah, I guess so."

They exchanged what seemed like rather halfhearted goodbyes before the sound of heels hitting the wooden floor came from the hallway and down the steps, and a few moments later, the front door closed. Tori had been holding her breath the entire exchange, and now that Jade gave her a small smile, she couldn't help the laughing sound that came from her throat.

"I didn't even know she was home," Tori said, though she still looked rather relieved.

"Yeah. . . Me either," she replied, nearly snorting at her own words as she remembered having worried about that the night before when Tori was, again, making too much noise, (and she had to admit that she'd enjoyed every sound.) "Now, _I'm_ going back to sleep, so don't wake me up again."

The blue-eyed girl gave her another small smile before she buried herself in the comforter again. Tori eyed her, still sitting leaned against the headboard of the bed. When Jade felt the girl's stare on her, she looked up, capturing the girl's eyes with her own.

Tori's face grew hot as she caught a glimpse of the other girl's bare chest that was slightly hidden from view by the thick, dark hair that seemed to fall everywhere over her shoulders and face. When her eyes lingered there, Jade gave a wry grin, and she pulled herself up to the girl's level to place a soft, easy kiss on her lips.

x-x-x

Noon came and passed before Jade so much as shifted beneath the sheets; the scent of something smelling too familiar stirred her, and she rolled over to find that Tori was getting dressed beside her, pulling one of the other girl's shirts over her shoulders and already in a pair of shorts that were a bit tight on her.

"Hey," Jade murmured sleepily, pushing some of her thick hair out of her face.

"Hey," Tori replied with a small smile, suddenly feeling self-conscious as she adjusted the shirt. "I went ahead and took a shower. . ."

"That's fine," Jade said as the girl's voice trailed off. Then it _was_ her soap she was smelling.

Lying on her side and watching her, the dark-haired girl couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed that she hadn't woken up with Tori beside her - or that Tori hadn't waited long enough for them to _both_ get in the shower. But as Tori moved away from her and began to bend over to pick up some of the clothes that had been rather carelessly tossed about the room earlier, she couldn't help the sore feeling in the pit of her stomach at the memory of what had gone on between them the night before.

It shouldn't have been as easy as it was. None of it should been - from having the girl topless on the hood of her car to taking her completely in her room. But it was almost as though, for her, each movement was natural, and each touch all too comfortable; the way she moved her lips against her, or how their bodies seemed to even each other out, the way their fingers just _fit._

She couldn't recall things coming so easily between them before all this.

The thought of things becoming so incredibly intimate so quickly made her feel sick to her stomach, and even now as she watched the girl's hips as she moved around her room, she couldn't help the thoughts that began to flood into her mind.

_"You shouldn't have done it."_

_"She's going to regret it."_

_"Don't you remember Cat?"_

She could have sworn at the image of the redheaded girl that used to lay in bed beside her on a day like this.

But as she watched Tori turn back to her with a shy, small smile on her lips, looking as though she hadn't remembered a thing that had happened the night before in the bed Jade was now lying in (completely naked,) the image disappeared, and for a moment, her mind was nearly silent.

Somehow, Jade knew in the back of her head that she was going to be hurt again.

And she was okay with that.

x-x-x

Tori's mother had finally called at around two o'clock, asking if she'd made it to school alright. Jade had contemplated this before; the woman wouldn't make her kid a damn sandwich had she asked for it, and she hardly listened to a word she said - or so she had heard Tori say before, and at first, she hadn't believed it, (unless the mother only neglected Trina; she decided that was understandable.) Jade had thought that no one could possibly be as condescending or unfeeling or _unloving_ as her own mother, (except, perhaps, her own father.) But after the brief and rather impersonal conversation Tori's mother had just shared with her daughter over the phone, she came to the conclusion that there was a possibility that Tori's parents came close. The woman either trusted the girl completely or she simply didn't care. Unless it concerned herself, Tori's mother was honestly not all too overbearing about her daughter's whereabouts.

Well, that was blatantly obvious, now that she actually thought about it - they'd ended up in a Yerbanian prison half a world away, slept over at a sketchy teacher's house with three boys (if Robbie really counted,) and had passed through a dangerous part of some ratty old city on their way to Pasadena - in a _cupcake._ She half-jokingly mused that if Tori had just told her that she'd slept with another girl, her mother wouldn't have been fazed in the slightest.

The thought of Tori actually doing that caused her to laugh out loud as she picked at some of the food on her plate.

The two of them were sitting at a small, scarcely-known cafe that was barely registrable from the rest of the houses on this side of town. Had there been any more than three other customers in at the time, it would have been incredibly cramped, but the place was almost completely desolate aside from the two of them and what looked to be only one waitress on duty.

It was a was dimly-lit and tiny room, but the place smelled of things freshly-baked and had a very comfortable, homey atmosphere to it that you really didn't find all to often in the area, so it was something of a safe haven for Jade, (whose home wasn't half as relaxed as this little cafe seemed to be.)

Tori, who had lived in LA for all of her life, was unaware that these kinds of places even existed in the over-crowded and bustling city - and she was sometimes pleasantly surprised when she came upon something she would have never known about had she not been shown. The city was big, and she was beginning to become aware that it would be impossible to know more than a little bit of what it had to offer, as it obviously catered to many different tastes and lifestyles.

The fact that any place in the city would play such soft, almost-country-sounding music was enough of a shock to her, but there they sat at a small table with an obnoxiously bright yellow tablecloth and antique-looking wooden chairs with (comfortably) cushioned seats as some up and coming artist picked a guitar on the stereo system overhead.

"I didn't know you liked this kind of music," Tori said with a small laugh before taking another bite of the salad before her.

"I don't," Jade murmured, shaking her head. "I come here for the coffee."

Tori knew at least part of her statement was a lie, as the coffee they'd set on the table was probably brewed content from a Folger's can and was served black. Jade had piled on the sugar and made it drinkable, but it wasn't anything special like what they served at an actual high-end coffee shop.

But maybe it was the sound of the guitars and mandolins and the softly spoken voices of the people playing them as she sipped from her mug that calmed her, as she seemed much more relaxed than she had on the drive over here nearly twenty minutes ago.

Tori was about to ask her how she'd found this place when her cellphone vibrated.

It was a text from Beck.

She looked up to Jade, whose eyes were closed as she took a sip from her cup, and quietly, Tori read the message.

"Can I come see you after school?" it read. Tori looked at the clock in the top right corner of her screen and swore. It was half past two, and school let out in less than half an hour.

She contemplated her reply as she looked to Jade who, now looking back at her, seemed a bit annoyed at her texting while they were eating. For a moment, Tori looked between the girl before her and the phone, trying her hardest not to look as perplexed as she was as she decided on something to say.

"Yeah sure" was all she replied, but as soon as she pressed the send button, she felt as though she was going to be sick.

"Who was it?" Jade asked, her brow quirked and her tone slightly bemused.

"Trina," Tori replied more quickly than she'd meant to. "She said she didn't see me at school today."

Jade gave her a stare that looked as though it was waiting for something more to be said, and as Tori fumbled with her purse, the blue-eyed girl only smiled as she shook her head and grabbed the bill from off the table before her.

"I'll take you home, then." Her voice was more of a forced statement than a pleasant offer, and although it should have been simple enough, there was a look of suspicion in her eyes that Tori couldn't help but feel hurt by.

x-x-x

As her car pulled to a stop at in the driveway of the Vega home, Jade looked to the girl beside her one last time, expecting some explanation for having their time together cut short. The excuse of Trina threatening to tell her mother unless she was given details was obviously false; Tori was a bad liar, especially to Jade, who had a way of silently calling her out on things, (when she didn't do it so blatantly before others.)

"I'll text you," Tori said, her eyes not meeting Jade's. The dark-haired girl took in the sight of her; her warm palms that were placed awkwardly in her lap, her trembling lips, the way her voice seemed as though there was more to say than what had been said. And even as she felt a bout of anger coming over her at the obvious lies being told to her, Jade felt as though she couldn't be angry _at_ _her _- not at the moment, anyway.

As Tori moved to get out of the car, Jade captured her chin with her thumb and forefinger, stopping her and gently pulling her closer to her. She leaned in and met the girl the rest of the way, and as Tori looked to her in surprise, Jade caught her stare with her own, holding it captive as her free hand moved to brush a few strands of stray brown hair from the girl's face.

And then, in that way that only Jade could manage, she pressed against the slimmer pair of lips with her own fuller ones, just hard enough to cause Tori to shake as her hand pulled her closer by the hair. The kiss softened before Jade pulled herself away, Tori following her lips for a moment, before finally they looked to each other.

The look in Jade's eyes spoke volumes to Tori, and in silence, the message was conveyed.

_Remember who you belong to._

x-x-x

Tori froze.

She'd just set her purse on the coffee table before the couch, and suddenly, the feeling of someone watching her caused her blood to run cold. Looking up, she noticed for the first time since entering her house that Beck was sitting at the table across the room from her.

"Beck," she said, sounding both surprised and relieved. "What are you. . . How did you . . .?"

"Your mom let me in," he said, looking only slightly amused. When Tori looked toward the window to see if her mother's car was in the drive, (although she could have sworn she hadn't seen anyone's car there at all,) Beck continued, "She went shopping."

"Oh," Tori said, moving over to him rather slowly, (hesitantly.)

For a moment, she merely looked over him; from the lack of the normal curvature of his lips - which seemed slightly frowning even, if only from being in thought - to the way his eyes seemed to burn into her relentlessly. He looked more _intense_ than she could recall having seen him before, and in a way much more seriously, (if not downright _gravely,_) than normal.

"I thought you were sick today," Beck said, looking her over.

Tori took a seat at the table adjacent from him, and when he looked her in the face, she gave him an awkward, forced half-smile. He raised his brows back at her, and immediately she felt as though something heavy had just struck her in the chest.

"You know I wasn't sick," she replied quietly, although there was a tinge of venom behind her words.

"Yeah," Beck said, looking away for a moment. "I know."

Tori felt as though she should give him some sarcastic slap, to tell him that it was none of his concern what she did or who she did it with, to keep his nose out of her business, that she could handle herself. It was a quick, fleeting burst of anger, and she looked to him through pressed brows. However, when his eyes looked to the other side of a room and he heaved a sigh, the feeling immediately died down, and she realized that there was no way she would be able to say any of this to him; not after having knowingly ignored his request - advice? - to be tread carefully with Jade.

She had more than just a simple hunch that he was well aware of what had happened, and the idea of him imagining her with his ex-girlfriend - Jade's hands on her hips, tongue between Tori's teeth - made her feel sick to her stomach, but at the same time, it stirred a feeling inside of her that couldn't be described as only 'shame' or 'discomfort'; there was something exhibitionistically _erotic_ in the mix of sensations going through her in that moment.

They sat there in silence as a few moments passed.

Things had been different. Tori had realized it last night; things were beginning to grow intense between herself and Jade, and the rest of the world - the rest of the _people_ - around her seemed to have become completely insignificant by comparison. The only thing on her mind was the girl she'd been lying next to the night before, and half the day after that; they were becoming something of an inseparable pair, although they weren't always together.

Tori couldn't tell how things had gone down the way they did. It wasn't but a few months ago that Jade seemed to absolutely _abhor_ her, but as she'd come closer to knowing the girl, even only over these past few weeks - or had it been longer than that? - she realized that 'hate' was a term too simple to describe the way Jade had felt about her. Even now, as the two found themselves enveloped in each other's arms with lips and hands touching where they pleased, there was a sense of walking the line between two worlds, two emotions. Although Tori couldn't quite place a name for this world of two sides, she found that she was more than fine with not knowing how to describe it. To her, and perhaps to Jade as well, the thing the two of them shared wasn't meant to be described - it was just _them._

Her thoughts were drifting again, and she didn't feel Beck's eyes lingering over her own as she looked off somewhere beyond the walls of her home.

Beck wasn't blind, and he certainly had some sort of idea for what she was feeling. He watched the way her hands trembled as she held them together before her on the table, the way her lips trembled as if she was remembering the dark-haired girl's touch against her skin; everything, in some way, he knew he could relate to, although he wasn't sure if he should tell her just how he felt about her - Tori - feeling those things now, so blatantly, right before him.

He wasn't upset. He shouldn't have been; it wouldn't make any sense to feel any sort of anger toward the girl that he _knew_ had been attracted to Jade for some time, even when he had been dating the girl. They both had similar feelings for the girl, (although he told himself that his own were all in his past as he worked to move on, to forget her,) and he couldn't bring himself to feel any jealousy for the brunette sitting next to him, as it would simply just be completely pointless.

What was happening was going to keep happening, no matter what he did, no matter how much he detested the idea of his girlfriend so easily forgetting him; it was inevitable. But he felt as though he could at least _try _to keep Tori from getting hurt the way he had been.

Yes, he'd let her walk away. He'd let the girl he loved remove herself from his life, taking his heart with her, and he hadn't tried to fix anything thereafter. But inside, even as she reached the end of her countdown outside the Vega home, he knew that it had been the biggest mistake he'd ever made, and would probably be the last one he would so consciously and intentionally make. He'd known things would hurt for a while, but even now, _months_ after things had ended between him and the dangerous girl he'd come to love, he couldn't shake unbearable sensation of falling - as if he still hadn't reached rock bottom.

The breakup could have been officially ended by Beck's failure to go after Jade, but in the end, he wasn't the only one to blame. Things had become tense between the two of them toward the end of their relationship, and whenever Beck so much as talked about another girl, Jade was on him; physically and verbally. If his mind slipped, or if they had a small argument, he'd always find the woman making her way into his lap, his hands on the sides of his face, her eyes (darkened like some predator's,) and without any words more than, "shut up," she'd capture his lips in her way of claiming him.

After a few months of fighting and screaming and _tears_, almost _always _followed by a session of heated sex, he found that he couldn't ride her rythm anymore; she was so hot and passionate one moment, and the next, she pushed him away and wanted nothing to do with him; and Beck simply couldn't take the strings of his heart and emotions being plucked so roughly any longer.

But only less than a week after their breakup, he'd come to a realization that he wished he'd come to so much sooner.

Jade only needed his reassurance when both their minds were slipping elsewhere.

And as he looked to the girl sitting next to him, he knew where Jade's had been.

Beck gave a quiet sigh, and Tori looked to him for a moment, watching as he leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. By the way his brows were slightly furrowed, and his lips curved into an easy but concentrated pose, she could tell he was in thought.

In that moment, a thought came to her that she hadn't previously paused to dwell on all too much; what had his warning about Jade really _meant?_ 'She doesn't let go,' he'd said. _Doesn't let go._ The words lingered there in her mind as her fingers absently reached for her lips, to where she had bitten her the night before so unwittingly violently, and where she had placed that fleeting, _wanting_ kiss only a few minutes before, (though it was beginning to feel as though it had been hours ago.)

"What did you mean?" she asked aloud, having hardly heard herself say it. Beck looked to her for a moment with raised brows, and when Tori noticed his eyes on her, she continued, "I mean. . . When you told me to be careful the other day."

Beck thought, quietly studying her face as his fingers wrapped and unwrapped themselves on the table before him. What had he meant? It had made sense when he'd said it, but now that he was looking to her, (smelling Jade's shampoo on her,) he couldn't bring himself to think the way he had at the time he'd given her that warning, and it seemed like it had been a million years ago.

But then it came to him, and the thought slapped him in the face. He had been so lost in the physical scent of her - and the idea of her body, and the memory of her voice as he touched her and _loved_ her - that he had forgotten why in the first place things had gone awry. Then, the boy realized that his gaze had been settled on Tori's neck, where a mark was showing slightly from behind her hair, and he raised his eyes back to face, (which was now slightly reddened.)

"What I meant," he began slowly, heaving a sigh with his words, "was that Jade isn't exactly stable. Emotionally, I mean."

Tori watched him for a moment for any signs of humor, but when he looked to the table with a soft, pained smile, she nodded her head.

He continued, "She doesn't just want somebody to be with her and. . . Well, love her. She _needs_ them."

Beck shook his head slowly, his eyes wandering from the table to the walls again, to where he'd stood when Jade had given him his last chance. "And I wasn't there when she needed me. I was just so. . . so _sick_ of her taking her mood swings out on me, you know? I just couldn't be her punching bag anymore."

"I'm sorry," Tori said quietly, averting her gaze from him. The way the dark-haired boy's words had a hint of bitterness behind them made her uncomfortable, and she shifted in her seat slightly, trying not to think of the night before when Beck was telling her what actually _had_ happened to Jade and himself.

"I'm not mad at you either," he said quickly, looking to her, and her eyes met his for a moment. "I'm not mad at you at all. That's not why I said that." His eyes lowered to her lips for a moment, and he didn't ask why the lower one was so swollen.

"But, then. . ." Tori gave a slight, nervous smile. "Why _did_ you say it?"

This time, Beck knew his answer.

"So you don't hurt her next."

x-x-x

Beck had left a few hours earlier. Tori had gone upstairs to her bathroom and had attempted to cover the mark on her neck as best she could, as beck had pointed out that it was quite noticeable beneath her hair, and as she stood in front of the mirror, she'd realized that she had worn one of the outfits she was sure Beck had seen Jade in a million times before.

The brunette was lying on her back, her eyes searching the ceiling for something else to think about. For the first time in a long time, she was thinking about someone other than Jade. Her mind was elsewhere, in some place other than her own, cold, _lonely_ bed, as last night she'd realized that the only place she truly wanted to lie was next to Jade.

Her lip was hurting. Tori had put on some chapstick to get rid of the taste of blood rising to the skin, but the feel of Jade's teeth there still lingered, and she couldn't help but run her tongue over the place where the indention could still be felt, (although she hoped could not be seen.)

But her mind was on Beck, and on how sincere he had sounded, and how accepting he was of things, and of how he hadn't shown even the slightest bit of accusation toward her. She wasn't thinking of him in any way less than innocent; rather, she was thinking of just how amazing a boyfriend he'd probably been to Jade.

Now that she thought about it, Beck had always seemed to have known how to handle Jade's harshness, and how to hold her when she was upset, and how to keep her from simply lashing out at the world and the people around her when she most wanted to simply _break._ And how he had gone from being able to redirect her anger and what she could only assume was something close to 'suffering' to being nothing more than the thing that absorbed the impact, she could not wrap her mind around.

Beck had been so honest, but at the same time, Tori could tell there was a lot he was keeping from her.

And for what reason, she did not know.

x-x-x

She turned over beneath her pitch black comforter again, her face pressed into the pillow that Tori had rested on the night before.

Reaching for her phone on the far side of her mattress, she turned on the screen, and there were no new notifications; and in her inbox, there were no new messages.

It bothered her - Tori not being honest with her. Jade felt as though the girl was hiding something from her, and she wanted to know what it was before things went any further than they already had. She wanted to make sure Tori knew that she was serious, and she wanted Tori to know that she wasn't going to simply let her walk out on her like Beck had.

Her chest hurt for a moment at the thought of that happening all over again with the girl she was beginning to ache for - for the girl she wanted here right now instead of somewhere else, keeping her secrets to herself.

Jade had come to finally realize that not only did she want Tori to be hers (and only hers,) but she wanted to be Tori's one and only as well.

Her instinct told her to run, to let the girl go while she still could, to just _stop_ before things got out of hand. But all she could think as she remembered the very feel of the girl sitting next to her was so entirely simple that she couldn't bring herself to dwell on her instincts any longer.

Closing her eyes, her cheek resting on the pillow, (now cold beneath her skin,) she couldn't help but repeat the thought in her slipping consciousness.

_She's what I want._

And sleep came quickly and effortlessly.


	7. Part Seven

**Disclaimer;**

Victorious still don't belong to me, I don't reckon.

**Warnings;**

This fanfiction contains femslash - Jade and Tori. It's rated M and for a reason. If you're not into this kind of thing, it's cool, but please don't read this.

**Author's Note;**

Back again with part seven.

I wanted to put a chapter out before I'm completely enveloped in papers and studying for finals, as well as helping my dad during the day, (he's having his knees replaced,) so I put a couple nights' worth of work into this one. Call it a contribution to Holiday Cheer, or just another chapter; but I knew needed to hit lucky number seven before the new year came about. I'm only a little superstitious, but the number seven is a strong, meaningful number for me, so I'm glad I could reach it.

I'll be going to school every night of the week through the month of January and four nights a week after that for the rest of the semester. That gives me two days a week to focus on things unrelated to school, as I work all day Sunday. So from this chapter on, I'll only be able to update when I can find the time between work, school, and personal matters - but this fanfiction's nowhere _near _done, and I don't plan to let it die anytime soon. Just try to bear with me as I work my way through a new semester and some changes in my life.

Sorry this update is a little short, but I feel like I wrote what needed to be written, so I stopped where I felt it was right to do so.

As usual, thank you for all the reviews, messages, favorites, and watches I get - really, just thank you for reading this. I say this every time I post an update, and I plan to continue to do so, because I mean it.

Let's get to going.

**Can't Stop**

_Part Seven_

Since the day before, Trina had been too incredibly, _suspiciously_ quiet. Whenever Tori looked at her, the older girl would avert her eyes from her sister, as though she hadn't been staring at her neck in the first place, and for a while, things continued like this in absolute and heavy silence.

Having walked in to find her sister and Beck sitting on the couch the previous evening, watching them talking as they watched some sitcom on the television, a sense of secretive curiosity and scheming had come over Trina, and she decided she would put together the pieces of this wildly entertaining mystery that were being presented to her in sporadic, unrhythmic timing.

At least, in _Trina's mind_, this is how things had happened.

In reality, she had blatantly walked up behind them and moved between them to get a closer look at the dark mark that still stained the skin of her sister's neck. There was that dark, circular mark left on her skin, and as Trina later tried to pass it off as pulling a loose string from Tori's shirt, neither Tori or Beck believed it.

The rest of the night, Trina spent her time on her PearPad, searching through her sister's friend list to see if anything new had begun between her Tori and Beck, feeling something close to intense curiosity and jealousy boiling in the pit of her stomach.

x-x-x

Tori absently stabbed at the spaghetti on her plate with her fork, uninterested in eating. She was too caught up in the thoughts that kept swirling around so madly in her head that she couldn't bring herself to take but only a bite or two, although she hadn't eaten since the day before when she and Jade had sat across from one another in that lovely - _strange_ - cafe on the other side of town. However, as she sat there, she listened passively as Andre and Cat sat across the table from her, talking to one another about one of the redhead's wild stories of her brother's strange (and sometimes implausible) experiences.

Honestly, her mind was slipping, even as she tried her hardest to be at least somewhat attentive - nodding her head when it seemed appropriate, saying things like "that's crazy" or "are you serious?" Everything she said and did she knew wasn't anywhere close to being genuine, so after a few minutes, she'd begun to keep to herself more openly, and the words that were being exchanged all around her became nothing but white noise off somewhere in the distance.

Tori's mind was elsewhere - it was where it had been for the past few weeks, and as though it was all she could focus on, she simply could not find herself to be interested in what went on in the affairs of the others around her. Her world, at least for now, was centered around the girl who was probably thinking about her current "other half" as well.

She'd seen Jade in the hallway earlier. The dark-haired girl had been stalking around the corner like some sort of strange animal - alert-looking and graceful with each fluid movement she made - when she caught Tori's eye. They held each other's gaze for a moment, as if, (from opposite sides of the corridor,) sizing one another up; gauging each other's potential reaction to whatever they should decide to say. And when the brunette smiled at the darker-haired girl, the latter quirked a brow, almost impatiently. Tori had watched her move for only a moment longer before Jade's eyes shifted to the locker a few feet down from her own, and Tori's eyes followed the other's, to where Cat and Beck had stood talking, Beck's eyes quietly and inconspicuously surveying the two girls as they exchanged their glances.

In absolute silence, Jade had given Beck a hard stare that relayed a message Tori could read, even as she stood several feet out of the line of fire.

_Watch your step_.

Even as she sat here now, almost two hours later, Tori could understand why Jade would want to put some distance between the two of them at the moment, with Beck (and perhaps even Cat) keeping a watchful eye on the two of them - but even so, she still couldn't grasp the reason why Jade would so deliberately look to Beck as she had earlier.

She subconsciously faltered in her movements and her breaths.

Beck knew. Cat was close to knowing. Andre and Robbie - they were smart enough to see something was definitely going on with at least Tori herself, (although neither of them seemed to be too close to Jade, and Robbie didn't seem all to fond of her himself.) So why were things required to be so surreptitious between herself and Jade? And how had that illusionary _necessity_ to keep things under the radar made sense to her only moments before?

Tori considered this for a moment, letting her mind drift further, back to Jade and Beck when they'd been together - how they had so openly displayed their affections for one another wherever they so pleased. How they'd kissed, and touched, and how one of their heads would end up on the other's shoulder or lap. For a moment, Tori couldn't help the unsettling, barren feeling that formed in her chest from these memories.

Why couldn't it be this way with herself and Jade?

She knew half of the answer. Unfortunately, it was almost inevitable that they would be met with negative attention and potentially outright hate; whether or not it spawned from her friends, she was unsure, but by the people who looked on without having the slightest idea of who either of them were, the two were naturally bound to be judged.

But Jade didn't seem like the type to give a damn about what other people thought of her - either that characteristic about her was legitamate, or she played this persona of hers_ pretty damn well_.

And once more, back to their friends - surely they would understand, right? If anyone, Beck would have been upset - but he knew, and he wasn't upset in the slightest. Tori could guess that he'd known about Jade's sexuality for some time, (and perhaps he had been the one to help bring it out in her - which was a thought that she wished wouldn't have crossed her mind in the first place.)

And the others. . . It was 2012, and they lived in LA. _Surely_ her friends were much less _closed-minded_ than she feared. She was certain Andre would be alright with it - he'd probably think it was _hot_, for all she could guess, and Robbie never did seem to be one to judge all too quickly, (sad as that was, for as quick as people were to judge _him_.) As for Cat -

_What about Cat?_

It was all so strange. The other night when they were supposed to have been working on their project - which, as far as she knew, they'd failed, - the little red-headed girl had been so eager to open up to Tori; to tell her how strange things had been not only between the both of them, but between herself and Jade as well.

Cat may not have been the most outwardly intelligent person Tori knew, but she realized something as she sat there at the table, watching the girl take Andre's hands in her own as her lips opened into a large smile.

The girl might not be half as simplistic and unintelligent as she seemed to be. And for a moment, Tori couldn't help but wonder if Cat was actually something _more_ of an actress than she would ever claim to be, or ever rise to be in the ways of a career - an actress on a much higher level than she ever could have guessed, had she not seen the crack in the facade those few nights prior.

Yes, something had been different about Cat. There was something absent in her voice, and her words were spoken fluently - unbroken. And although Tori's mind had drifted at the time the words were said, she began to recall little bits and pieces of the one-way conversation that had ensued between the two of them, and although vague, Tori could recollect enough of the words to realize that for once, Cat had been significantly _present_.

Present. Not as though her mind was somewhere else; not as though she was the ditziest little thing on the face of the earth. As though she was completely and genuinely _there_ up inside her head.

And what had she talked about in her little flood of audibly-spoken thoughts and emotions?

Jade. _Only_ Jade.

She'd been so quick to talk about Jade, and by the way she'd spoken of her - and the way her hands trembled, and her voice quivered, her eyes threatened _tears _- it was all something Tori found incredibly familiar, in some strange, inexplicable way. However, as she thought further, she had just about placed her finger on it, and -

Jade lowered herself into the seat beside her, and without so much as looking in the brunette's direction, she plainly said the word, "Hey."

The girl's eyes eyes looked over to the new arrival in subtle disbelief. Jade had just taken a seat between Tori herself and Cat, and for a moment, all she did was look down at the salad before her with a detached and disinterested look about her expression.

"Hey, Jade," Andre said from across the table, looking almost nervous as his eyes shifted between the dark-haired girl and the redhead beside her. Obviously, he knew something of their - of their what? Tori settled for calling it something of a falling out of sorts. "Haven't seen you in a while."

"I was sick," Jade said, so smoothly and effortlessly that Tori had to remember that she wasn't just the girl she was beginning to look like - she was still also a cunning and skilled liar when she felt it was necessary, almost to the extent of potential _criminality_. And then, taking Tori by surprise, (although it honestly shouldn't have,) the blue-eyed girl glared daggers at him and continued, "I guess that's illegal now or something."

Andre sputtered, "No, I didn't mean it like -"

"We were _worried_," Cat whimpered, her voice louder than she'd expected it to be.

The silence that ensued went uninterrupted for several moments. It was heavy and cold, and the brunette felt she might choke on it if something didn't happen sometime soon - although whether she'd rather choke on the silence or suffer through the fight that was sure to be the alternative, she was unsure.

But Tori watched in near horror as Jade's pale gaze settled on the smaller girl to her right, looking at her as though she could quite easily rip her throat out without the slightest sense of remorse about it. For a moment, Tori was frozen, watching the two look at each other, and all she saw between them was a brewing storm of hurt and anger and what looked like _betrayal._

Finally, when Jade opened her mouth to speak, Tori quickly raised herself from her seat and caught Jade by the arm.

"Can I talk to you for a minute?" she asked, trying her hardest to sound calm, though the request came out somewhat strained and shaky. Jade's eyes came up to meet hers, and for a fraction of a second, Tori felt as though she was burning alive in the fire of the rage burning within the girl.

"Why?" the dark-haired girl spat. "What do _you_ want?"

The venomous way Jade spoke to her felt more like a slap across the face than anything else, and for a moment, Tori was tempted to call her out on it. However, as she matched Jade's stare, she noticed the girl's eyes shift toward the other two at the table - and immediately, she realized what she had meant.

"You're being mean," Tori began carefully. "I know you're" - she swallowed quickly - "not _feeling good,_ but don't take it out on everyone else."

Jade's brow quirked, and with her lips curved into an uneven (and rather _genuine_-looking) grin, she continued, "Fine, I get it. Now sit down and _shut up_."

And without hesitation, and for no actual reason to do so other than Jade's insistence to keep up appearances, Tori complied.

x-x-x

The door closed behind them as Jade roughly shoved the other girl into the closet. Before Tori could so much as make a sound, Jade turned and attacked the girl's lips with her own. Her movements, and her hands and lips, and the heat on her cheeks showed such anger and frustration and _hunger_ that Tori couldn't bring herself to stop the girl, and instead, she simply allowed herself to become completely enveloped by the feel of the girl moving against her so forcefully.

"_God,_ Tori_,_" Jade growled against the girl's thinner pair of lips, moving in closer once more and kissing her again before continuing, "you're an _idiot._"

The words should have stung, but by the way Jade's hands were slipping down Tori's back and to the top of her jeans, something about her words inexplicably seemed more concerned than angered.

Jade's fingers slipped beneath the hem of Tori's shirt, and the brunette nearly moaned against her, already feeling the excitement she had the last few times she'd been in the janitor's closet with the other girl - but she restrained herself, trying her hardest not to let herself revel in the feel of the girl's hot fingers touching the small of her back; trying not to get lost in the sensation of a warm, wet set of lips closing themselves around a particularly sensitive spot of skin on the right side of her jaw.

She'd come in here with her for something - what was it? It was a question, right? But the feel of the girl's mouth hungrily trying to _devour_ her was so distracting and so easy to allow herself a slip of the mind, if only for a moment. . .

But she couldn't allow herself to become so effortlessly distracted by the girl.

"_Jade,_" she said, trying her hardest to sound firm.

The message was received. The blue-eyed girl's lips faltered, and she retracted herself, her pale eyes meeting Tori's darker pair. For a moment, they stayed like that - each looking at the other, each wondering what the other was hiding, each feeling somewhat _betrayed _in some form or another. They could see the hurt in each other, in the way the other's brows were slightly knitted, and in the way their fingers tightened around the other's skin - as if clutching to hold on to whatever connection they did have among all the lies and the mistrust and the quiet disloyalty.

Naturally, Tori was the first to look away.

"What?" Jade asked, her hands removing themselves from the brown-eyed girl's waist, causing Tori's skin to go cold. "What did you do?"

"What did I -" Tori sighed stopped herself, sighing and dismissing her own words. After shaking her head, she continued, "What's up with you and Cat?"

Jade's reaction, as usual, was completely unexpected.

The girl froze, her eyes watching Tori carefully as she stood there in silence, her arms crossing themselves over her chest. Tori was quiet, trying not to look away as the girl's eyes scrutinized her own, and she couldn't help but shift uncomfortably as Jade's brows furrowed, her lips curled downward slightly.

Tori didn't know what else to do, so she simply continued on.

"I mean, you looked like. . ." The brunette paused, thinking for a moment. "You looked like you were about to punch her or something. You looked _really mad _at her."

Jade shifted her weight over to her other leg, and looking away, she contemplated the girl's words, trying not to allow the worry that was beginning to flood within her to show on her face.

She knew it had been obvious that she wasn't pleased with Cat, but for some reason, she got the feeling that Tori was more aware of _why_ she was upset with her than she should have been.

With a sigh, she said quietly, "It's nothing." With a quick glance in another direction, she continued, "She's just - she's mad that you and I are spending so much time together."

"That's not what she said - why are you ignoring her?"

In the silence that followed, Tori became aware that she'd said her thoughts aloud, and she couldn't help the look of shock that came over her face as Jade took a step closer.

Jade watched as the girl blatantly cowered away from her, and she stopped dead in her tracks as she realized that she'd tensed her shoulders and clenched her fists as though she was about to strike the girl.

For once, she restrained herself, just as she had failed to do in her previous relationship - and _goddamn it,_ she had been doing so well to not think about him in that sense for the past two days. She couldn't _stand_ the thought of losing her to _him._ And yet, here she was, about to make the same mistakes she'd made with him in the first place - and although he'd tolerated it, he hadn't for long, and she suspected that Tori couldn't handle her rage like _he_ could.

That thought caused a pain in her chest that felt as though she'd just been struck by something heavy.

_Focus_, she told herself. _Focus._

And then, as though looking through all the thoughts swimming in her mind of herself with her ex-boyfriend and of the girl they'd been talking about, she remembered just who she suspected had sent Tori that text the day before during lunch. For the first time in what seemed like quite a while, she decided to outwardly put the blame on Tori to keep from losing her mind in all these regrets about the people she was trying her _goddamn hardest_ to forget.

"Why were you with Beck yesterday?" she asked, though the words sounded more like a demanding statement from the clenched teeth through which they were spoken.

With her back against the clear spot on the other side of the closet, Tori's face still showed slight distress, and as her fingers clawed at her own sides, she tried her hardest not to look the other girl in the eyes. She knew why she'd been with him yesterday - and why should it be a secret? Like this - this whole _thing_ going on between herself and Jade - why should any of this be kept under wraps? Why should there be dishonesty in this strange, _beautiful_ little world they were creating with each other?

But her words betrayed her thoughts completely.

"What are you talking about?"

Jade moved toward her, put her hands on her shoulders and pressed her _hard_ into the wall behind her, her breath coming to her ragged, as though she'd been running, due to the pressure of her anger rising from her core and spreading throughout her chest like some sort of poison in her veins. The anger in her eyes was unmasked and completely obvious to the girl now pinned beneath her grasp and Tori couldn't help the whimper that escaped her.

"Don't lie to me," Jade growled, quieter than she would have said it had they not been where others could hear them. She had to stay quiet, keep under control; she'd be expelled if she got caught pommeling the poor brunette to death; and honestly, she didn't want to do that in the first place. Old habits just wouldn't die. In a more even tone, she continued, (still unsettlingly quiet,) "Don't stand there and fucking _lie to my face._"

The brown-eyed girl could never honestly say that in that moment, she was not truly afraid. This girl - this _predator_, as she'd come to think of her - was so wildly unpredictable that, even while it was incredibly exciting and somehow incredibly _enticing_, it was also undeniably, terrifyingly _dangerous_. For a moment, the girl thought back to the words that Beck had said to her - how he'd warned her to be careful. How Jade "doesn't let go."

_Doesn't let go._

Why had she left Cat alone? Had she let her slip away, or the other way around? And what did she have to let go of in the first place-?

Tori swallowed hard, took a breath, and said, "You're not any better than I am. You won't even answer a question!"

Jade's face burned hotter. Her nails dug into the backs of Tori's shoulders, and she found that all she could do was stand there, holding her, challenging her. Tori held her gaze as strongly as she could manage, although she was sure she was going to lose this battle, if not this war. However, when the dark-haired girl allowed herself to think on the words, she realized that the other had made more reasonable of a point than she would have liked. Her eyes softened, and she released her grip on the girl, backing away slightly and running a hand over her hair, as though it would cool her off - something that she'd picked up from Beck, (who she was certainly _not_ going to think about in that moment.)

Sighing, the pale girl looked down to the floor as she spoke.

"Why should I trust you if you won't trust me?" she asked, although there was no venom or hate behind her words.

"I do trust you," Tori said too loudly. Collecting herself, she moved forward slightly, trying to close the distance between them that she had been praying for only moments before, confusing herself in her own actions. "I _do_. Let's just. . . Let's work this out."

Jade looked over the other girl, taking in every detail of her expression. Her eyes looking as though they were threatening tears; her trembling lower lip; the shakiness in her breaths. . . Although she'd meant to intimidate her, she hadn't meant to _scare the hell_ out of her, as it looked like she had by the way her cheeks were flushed and her forehead doused in a light sheet of sweat.

"Alright - Look." No apologies; not now. "If you'll be honest with me . . ." Jade paused closing her eyes as she continued the rest of her sentence. "I'll tell you what you want to know. But we can talk after school."

"Right," Tori said quickly, shifting slightly uncomfortably as she tried to dig for her cell phone in her pocket. "I think - I think we're already late for Sikowitz' class. W-we should. . ."

"I know," Jade said, and slowly, (carefully,) she moved to Tori, closing what space there was left between them. And as though she was trying to convey some sort of apology in that strange, _vague_ way of hers, she placed a kiss on the other girl's lips, gentle and lingering and _still_ heavy enough to tell the brunette that she was just as eager to get through all of this as Tori was, although they still burned with the heat of anger that had risen in her face only moments before.

And they left for class, each acting as though none of this had ever happened. However, before they opened the door to Sikowitz's classroom, Tori's hand slipped itself into Jade's for a short, fleeting, _sensational_ moment. Jade's eyes flickered to Tori, and there in the barren, lonely hallway, they allowed the feel of each other's fingers entwining themselves to stir up a mixture of feelings - of hurt and comfort, anxiety and _hope _- in both of their chests. Tori was tempted to take it further; to step forward and capture Jade's lips, and to tell her just how she was beginning to feel about her, right there where anyone could see them had they just been poking their heads around the corner.

But the moment was over, and Jade had to break off their contact. She murmured to Tori to walk in right after her and to look upset as she did so, and Tori agreed, her lips pursing at the feeling of the chill from the lack of contact with Jade's.

And then, as if it was only natural, they went back to hating each other in front of all of their friends and classmates.


	8. Part Eight

**Disclaimer;**

Victorious doesn't belong to me, which is why I write fanfiction for it to get my kicks.

**Warnings;**

This fanfiction contains the lesbian pairing of Jade and Tori. It's rated M, and it's rated thusly for a reason; so if you're not into girl-love and possible adult content, it's all good, but I'd advise you not to read this.

**Author's Note;**

This chapter isn't as long as I'd planned it to be, but what needed to be said was said, and that's how I feel it should be left. So, here's one more chapter out before 2013. I didn't expect to get this one done as quickly as I did, but I'm incredibly pleased with myself for finding the time to work on it, seeing as it was beyond hectic these past two weeks.

Thank you all for your time taken to read this, alerts, favorites, reviews, messages, and everything else. I hope this fanfiction keeps staying as fun for you all to read it as it is for me to write it.

I really don't have anything else to say except that I hope you all have a good start to a fresh new year. Some of us need it; I know I do. So please have yourself a good time and stay safe this New Year's. My resolution: to think less on the past, and look forward to what's to come.

I hope you enjoy part eight.

**Can't Stop**

_Part Eight_

School was becoming a thing that came and passed within what felt like an hour at most. The days seemed to grow shorter and the nights longer, and although it had been a slowly progressive thing, Tori was just then beginning to notice it.

She didn't know what kind of grades she was going to get, and for the first time in quite a while, she realized that she could actually be failing without knowing it. As well as she had been doing since she'd arrived at Hollywood Arts, she decided that she couldn't simply flunk out; and so that night after school, rather than wandering her way over to Jade's, she decided she was going to work on some paper she'd been assigned.

A history paper - _great_. Tori had deemed herself as 'adequate' in history, but having been through the wackiest and sometimes _impossible _tasks given to her by Sikowitz, anything any other teacher could throw at her seemed rather dull by comparison.

The paper itself only needed to be three pages in length, (which honestly wasn't too much more than a thousand words,) but at that point, with her mind in so many other places, three pages seemed more like three hundred.

Unable to focus, and now lacking the resolve that she'd had when she'd decided to work on this paper in the first place, she stood from the kitchen table, shutting her laptop as she did so, and moved toward the stairs. She wanted to shower, or lay down, or _something_ - anything that didn't involve thinking on that paper, (and preferably, something that didn't involve thinking about anything else, either.) If she could clear her head for a little while, she told herself, she'd be able to sit down and get the paper done. It was due next week anyway, but for once, she decided she'd try to be proper and prompt with an assignment, rather than waiting until the last fifteen minutes before class and hoping some miracle fell upon her from out of nowhere, (which, more often than not, it somehow had.)

She realized the shower was occupied at the moment by the sound water hitting the floor and her sister wailing like some sort of sick animal. It was strange, Tori thought, that two sisters could be so different from each other, especially when every other sibling she could think of seemed as though they had much more in common. She and Trina seemed to be on two polar ends, and although they shared some common ground, there wasn't much of it, and what there was wasn't anything more significant than a shared favorite drink or song.

And although she loved her sister - because she _was_ her sister, of course - she'd found herself trying her best to avoid her, particularly since the night Trina had come in and seen her sitting with Beck.

Immediately, Tori had known what it had looked like, and just as immediately, she'd realized what kind of position this could put her in with her friends.

And for the first time, as her sister turned the handle in the shower and shut off the water, something dawned on Tori that hadn't before: Trina could very well make _everyone at school _aware of something that wasn't true.

The thought seemed silly at first. No one would believe Trina; she was constantly pulling social stunts like that, claiming a couple had broken up or a new one had formed, (or that she herself had gotten with some guy or another.) Spreading rumors was one of the things she was known for, and frankly, few people took her seriously, as most of her lies were too far-fetched to be believed by even the most green and gullible of the school's gossips. However, the more she thought about it, the more she realized just how real it could be, (Tori being in a relationship with Beck.) People could see it happening, if they hadn't predicted it in the first place; from day one, Tori had kept an eye on Beck. At first, it had been obvious, like all the tweenage-fantasies-turned-cinema that excelled in the box office; he was the hot and sensitive guy, and she was the nice new girl. For a time, she would have had to admit that she thought the possibility was very real, (her being with Beck.)

However, all that time later, the feelings had changed – and they had changed _drastically_. Tori knew who she was into, and somehow, it had just so happened to have turned out being Beck's ex-girlfriend.

But who would know that? For all the people around her knew, she was still into Beck, and Beck was still into her - if he'd ever really felt that way about her before, she reminded herself. (Had he?) And if Trina was going to go around spreading lies like that, the first person to hear about it would be Cat. For some reason, Cat was the first one to receive news of these social occurrences, and she considered that the little redheaded girl could very well have some sort of (strange) friendship with Trina. And from Cat, the first person to hear such news _would have been_ Jade, had they still been talking. With Cat, however, things spread like wildfire; the girl could just as effortlessly scream it out from atop the steps in the main corridor of the school for everybody to hear, and Tori wouldn't have expected any less from her.

And whether or not something like that happened, Jade would inevitably find out.

It shouldn't have worried her, she told herself, and it wouldn't have - if Jade hadn't known that Beck actually had been at her house, and if Jade hadn't _always_ been the suspicious type, and if Jade wasn't as possessive as she was. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that this social train wreck of an idea really _should_ have worried her, with Jade being the girl she was; and she decided then, as she heard footsteps coming toward the bathroom door (where she just realized she'd been lingering for almost two minutes now,) that she needed to put out any sparks before a fire could start.

But not with Trina - she'd never believe that Beck and Tori were anything but thoroughly and impossibly _in love_. Although she'd told her earlier that she couldn't see her that night, Tori decided she needed to have that talk they'd discussed earlier with Jade.

x-x-x

"Finished that paper _already_?" Jade asked with unmasked displeasure in her tone.

Tori tentatively made her way into the home and placed her fingers on her temples, sighing as Jade simply closed the door behind her. As she turned to look to the dark-haired girl, she found that Jade was staring back to her, her brows knitted and her arms folded over one another. Tori's breath hitched; the girl standing before her looked truly unhappy with her (to say the least), and in that moment of discomfort in being scrutinized by the girl she was beginning to become somewhat obsessed with, she realized that the issues between them shouldn't - _couldn't_ - wait any longer.

"We need to talk," Tori said quietly.

"I know that," Jade said quickly, harshly. "I just thought you were going to blow me off tonight for that 'paper' of yours."

"I'm sorry," Tori said, and Jade rolled her eyes, giving a scoff that caused the brunette's chest to hurt.

"Forget it," Jade said, shaking her head. "Look, if you're going to talk, _good_. Just -" Her eyes shifted, looking around the room as if she was searching there for words. "-don't lie to me."

"I won't," the brown-eyed girl replied. "I promise."

For a moment, they stood there, looking to each other as though they were sizing one another up. But Jade nodded, her pale, blue eyes looking to the floor as she quietly murmured an "alright" before motioning for Tori to follow her to the couch. The other girl followed immediately, as if it had been more of a command than a request, and she sat next to Jade, whose eyes still did not want to meet the other's gaze.

"You know how you asked me what I was doing with Beck?" Tori began, and the dark-haired girl gave her an incredulous look, as though it was a completely unnecessary question. The brunette ignored this and continued, "Well, you were right. I _was _with him. . . and I don't know why I lied about it today." Jade gave her a look close to a scowl. "But we were just talking - when you took me home, I went in my house, and my mom had let him in, and -"

"Your mom's an idiot," Jade said, interrupting her, and although part of the brunette wanted to agree, Jade cut her off by asking, "What were you talking about?"

Tori froze beneath Jade's stare, which was boring into her own, as if trying to drag out the answer from her by force. For a moment, she couldn't think, and desperately, her mind reeled, trying to find something to say that wouldn't set the girl off like a match on kerosene. She realized that her fear was the thought that this conversation was going to be just as intense - as _frightening_ - as the one they'd had in the janitor's closet a few hours ago.

But she'd told Jade that she wouldn't lie, and she'd told herself that she wasn't going to let things continue to be so tense between them.

So, with a quick breath and a swallow, she said, "We were talking about you."

And Jade's expression changed completely.

It wasn't a look of anger, and she didn't seem upset - she only looked surprised.

For the longest time, she'd told herself that Beck was over her; hell, he'd been over her since before he'd let her walk away from him, she'd decided, because he would have been at her doorstep later that night if he'd felt any different. Constantly, when her mind would slip off to another time (another place,) and it would go back to _him_, she would repeat the words in her mind as though they were both a reminder and a pledge. _He doesn't want me._

If he didn't want her, he didn't think about her, and if he didn't think about her, then Jade felt as though she had no reason to try in pursuing anything else with him ever again. This illusion of obligation was no longer there so long as he wasn't thinking anything of her.

_Obligation_. There should never have been obligation there; he'd told her before, many times, that she never needed to give anything more to him, and that she already had given enough. And still, even as they had broken up _months_ ago, she felt as though she owed him so much more than she could ever repay him - and the feeling of being in debt to someone that she was on the verge of _wishing dead_ made her sick.

Tori watched as the girl sat silently, eyes shifting to the ceiling and closing before shaking her head and asking, "What about me?"

Without hesitation, Tori said quietly, "He knows. About you and me - he knows."

Jade's eyes shot up to Tori.

"You _told_ him?"

"No - of course I didn't tell him," Tori replied, giving her a confused look. "I don't know _how_ he knows, but he's known for a while -"

"How long have you known that _he does_?" Jade's voice was quick and sharp, and although the girl made no physical movement, Tori couldn't help but flinch at her words.

"A couple of weeks," Tori replied, her voice sounding strained. "He told me that I should be careful -"

Those last words had slipped. They'd slipped, and Jade had obviously heard them, by the way her eyes narrowed at her sudden pause, and there would be no taking back what was said. Tori shifted uncomfortably, her eyes looking off to the door as though she desperately wanted to be heading out of it at that very moment, but she suddenly felt the warm sensation of Jade's hand on her own.

Immediately, her stare was back on the dark-haired girl. Jade's eyes were closed, and she was trying as best as she could to keep her breathing even as she said, "I'm not going to be mad at you unless you lie to me again."

Tori knew that was a lie, even if Jade thought it to be the truth.

And Tori knew that either way she was somehow going to be screwed.

"He told me to be careful with you," the brunette continued quietly, turning her hand to take Jade's in her own, as though it would steady her in her words (and in her thoughts.) "I didn't know what he'd meant before, but the other night he told me he didn't want me to hurt you."

"Like _he_ hurt me," Jade said without having realized she'd said it. (She'd been telling herself for days now that she was getting much too comfortable with the girl much too soon.)

"That's exactly what he said to me," Tori agreed.

And once more, Jade's mind was turning over itself, lost in thought once more. He _had _been thinking about her, and for a moment, she felt stupid for having thought he could just so easily let go. But it had been her way of keeping herself together when her mind was so close to coming apart; if she could tell herself that she was the _only_ victim in the situation, she would have no need to feel any sort of guilt or regret about _him._ However, now that she was allowing the ideas to cross her mind, rather than repressing them completely, she told herself that she knew him better than to think that he could so simply let go - she knew him better than anybody else, and although she wasn't proud of that _now_, she had been at one time, and she had done her best to make sure that she was the only one who would ever know him better than he knew himself.

He couldn't forget about her, just like she couldn't forget about him, (although for the past few days, she'd been doing pretty good to get him off her mind.)

But the fact that he had given Tori his own bit of insight rubbed her the wrong way, and she felt some kind of heat rising to her skin as her mind jumped to a knew subject. Beck, the guy who she knew had done her wrong from that very night, was giving advice to the person he _knew_ his ex-girlfriend was with - and shitty advice at that. Jade had decided that Tori was smarter than she'd originally thought her to be, and for Beck to think any less of the girl somehow stirred some uncomfortable throbbing in her chest; feelings of suspicion, of hurt and _anger_, and immediately, she recognized these feelings.

When her property was in question, Jade was always defensive - always _possessive_. She had felt these emotions many times before, but never could she remember them having been completely directed toward _Beck_ - even when he was the one talking to another girl, or when he did something that she found to be utterly and irrevocably traitorous to her, (although until the fighting had started, she'd always easily let things go as soon as he'd been able to calm her.)

But now that her anger _was_ toward him, she found that it burned even more intensely than she'd ever felt before, and the energy was rising in her enough for Tori to feel an escalation in the temperature of her skin.

"He thinks he can fix things by - by helping _you_ be with _me?_" she asked, her voice low. "I can't fucking _believe_ that he thinks that could _ever_ make things any better between us!"

The dark-haired girl was standing, and by the way she started for the door, Tori could tell she fully intended to go straight to the source of her rising rage. Immediately, the brown-eyed girl grasped for Jade's arm, taking it and pulling her back - and Jade's head whipped around to stare her down, to tell her to let her go.

Tori knew her anger made the girl irrational - she'd seen it so many times, and it was something that she felt she could become familiar with but never accustomed to. But Tori held her gaze, trying to find the words to convey that he hadn't meant any harm, only to help someone he'd loved; to help Tori herself even, if that would calm the storm that was brewing within the girl she was holding onto so tightly, (so desperately.)

Jade looked to her, and although her pulse was still pounding in her ears, she found that she couldn't move when Tori was pleading her to stay with the look of her eyes, the set of her lips, her hand so tightly gripping onto her arm.

Tori couldn't handle her, Jade told herself. Tori couldn't handle Jade's rage, but if she wanted to keep her from going to Beck and quite possibly waking his entire neighborhood with the fight that would inevitably ensue, then she was going to learn just how much she needed someone to hold her back in the first place.

She turned and pushed Tori onto the couch without holding back, leaning over the girl and allowing her lips to hover only inches from her left ear, her breath coming ragged as it always did when she felt she was going to explode.

And then, as the hand not supporting the weight of her body slipped down to find the right side of Tori's neck, she murmured in little more than a whisper, "Make me stay."

Although the violent change in Jade's energy had caught Tori aback, she turned so that her lips pressed themselves into Jade's throat, suckling there slowly and gently.

And for once, it was really as simple as that.

Jade lowered herself so that she was straddling Tori's hips, and with one hand on the back of the sofa and the other cupping the brunette's cheek, she allowed the girl to kiss her neck just below her ear, where she'd always found she was so sensitive, and where she'd always found she could elicit such pleasurable reactions when she did it herself to Tori.

The brown-eyed girl's cheeks were heated, colored a shade of red they always turned when she found herself growing hotter, but her movements were bold and deliberate. Either she was picking up on Jade's habits or she was growing more confident in herself, and she chose to believe the latter as she allowed her teeth to scrape over the skin that was normally concealed by Jade's long, thick hair.

Jade gave a sigh that encouraged her forward, and Tori allowed her hands to move themselves to the girl's hips, her fingers immediately moving the girl's shirt up so they could have a feel for her skin. The dark-haired girl was warm all over, and whether it was from this sudden circumstance or the anger that had been welling up beforehand, Tori was unsure, but her hands began to grip for her as though holding on to her, keeping her there.

Tori was so emboldened by the murmurs of concurrence that escaped the other girl's throat that she slipped her tongue from between her teeth and gently ran it up the length of Jade's throat, tasting her skin, relishing the flavor. As Jade's hips pressed further toward her, Tori came to the realization that the girl was giving her full consent, letting her do something that she probably would never have allowed her to under any other circumstance at any other time. So when she placed a soft kiss beneath Jade's ear, she whispered as calmly as she could manage, "You're so sexy, Jade."

The words felt foreign on her tongue, but having already let them be said, she felt like much less of a prude than she had been those few nights before. Maybe she'd been new to what was happening, and maybe her movements against the girl on top of her were experimental at best, but the fact that she felt comfortable in what she was doing was enough to tell her that something novel and _amazing_ was growing within her - and that Jade had incited it within her, (through her touch, through the words and the _looks _that were meant only for the two of them,) Tori was sure.

Jade moved so that she could look down to Tori, who looked back to her unfalteringly. And for that brief moment that their eyes met, two colors of stark contrast, they conveyed something more to each other than simple _want_. But before any words could be uttered, Jade's lips were on Tori's, and once more, they each simply enjoyed the feel of savoring the other's touch against their body.

The urgent need to talk that had completely taken over Tori on her way over to Jade's had begun to almost wholly dissipate, and for the time being, all she could focus on was the feel of Jade's hands beginning to explore her as her lips completely devoured her. This time, however, the brunette allowed her own hands to do some wandering of their own, and they slipped themselves further down until they gripped the girl's ass, and Jade couldn't help but smile against the brunette's lips.

Jade broke the kiss long enough to retract slightly and remove her shirt, and with a soft smile on her face, Tori realized she hadn't been wearing a bra. Jade raised herself slightly so that her chest was more accessible to the girl, and immediately, Tori complied to Jade's silent desire, her hands running themselves up the small of her back and then gripping the sides of her breasts. Jade gave a sigh that sounded almost _pleading,_ and so not to keep her waiting any longer, Tori placed her lips on the inside of the girl's right breast.

"God," Jade hissed, her hand gently pulling Tori's head closer. She'd always been sensitive - throughout her whole body, she'd been susceptible to even the slightest of sensations, as she was rarely touched by anyone but the person she was with. Naturally, however, certain places on her body were bound to be more _responsive_ than others. And although she'd been with Tori for weeks now, things had been different; she had been the one doing most of the touching, not the other way around, and the feel of Tori's lips suckling their way to her perked center was enough to have her feeling as though she was going to become thoroughly insane.

However, just as Tori's lips closed around Jade's nipple, there was a sequence of knocks at the front door.

"_Fuck!_" Jade hissed quietly, her body freezing against Tori's.

"Maybe they'll think no one's home," Tori whispered quickly as Jade lowered herself back to eye-level with her.

They stayed still against one another, waiting for another series of knocks. Several moments passed in painful silence, and when the second round of raps came on the door, Jade swore again, sliding herself off Tori's lap and picking up her shirt from off the couch beside the girl.

"Go up to my room," Jade instructed hardly audibly. "I'll be up there in a minute."

"Is your mom home?" Tori asked as she made her way from the couch and toward the stairs, stepping softly as she could manage in her sneakers and with the speed with which she moved.

"No, no one's home -" Jade pulled her shirt the rest of the way onto her body before finishing, "Just go!"

Tori was already halfway up the flight of stairs.

x-x-x

"Cat," Jade said slowly, although there was a tone of surprise in her voice.

Jade stood there looking over the redhead, having crossed her arms over her chest to hide what her previous excitement had done to her there, (both in the rise and fall of her chest and _other_ reasons.) Her expression was void of emotion, as though her shields were up, and as her mind raced, she decided that those defenses weren't going to simply be brought down by whatever sort of scheme the girl had planned for her. However, when she noticed Cat looking more frightened than she _ever_ had at her house - where Cat had come almost routinely in the months prior to their 'falling-out' - she recognized a slight (and _only_ a _slight_,) twinge of guilt running through her veins from having nearly completely snapped on her during school that day.

So, when Cat let out a squeaking sort of "hey," she restrained herself from saying all the thoughts brewing in her mind like some sort of hurricane. The dark-haired girl looked over the smaller one, eyes narrowed, scrutinizing; wanting her to say more, but knowing full well that she was going to wait until Jade had her own chance to say what they both thought should so obviously be said, (and between them both, the idea was completely different.) While Cat was almost positive that this whole mess was mostly her fault, she knew she couldn't blame _only_ herself - because Jade had said and done some things that didn't quite sit with her well enough. But by the way the blue-eyed girl was looking at her now, a small fire kindling behind her clear, icy eyes, she could tell it was going to take much more than an apology and a little effort to get her to come around - to be her _friend_ again.

And the silence lingered in the air between them for several long moments, for what Jade could only have guessed as a minute or two, causing Cat to squirm slightly and causing the other girl to grow more impatient.

"I'm kind of busy, Cat," Jade said as evenly as she could manage, arching a brow at the newcomer. Taking a breath and returning her eyes to the girl, she (bitterly) asked, "What do you want?"

"I just -" Cat faltered, looking down at the ground, her thumbs twiddling with each other as her mind searched for a way to make her intentions clear to the girl before her. "I'm sorry for whatever I did that made you want to. . . ignore me. I didn't mean to make you mad or -"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Jade said, her face skewing into a snarl. She slowly moved down onto the step lower than her doorframe, level to where the smaller girl was standing as well, and with her words beginning to drip with venom, she continued, "I don't remember ignoring you. But I _do_ remember _you_ ignoring _me_."

There was another silence, and the two of them watched each other, each simply waiting for some sort of reaction from the other. But nothing came; and for some reason, when Jade's gaze met Cat's deep, brown eyes, her mind slipped to the girl who was probably undressing in her bedroom, waiting for her. And for the first time in looking at the girl who had inflicted upon her so much heartache - who had stomped on her emotions so, _so_ harshly without even so much as _realizing_ what she had done - she couldn't keep her mind on the redhead, or her pain, or her anger that had been so furiously buzzing in her head for _weeks _now.

Rather, she could only think of the other girl with deep brown eyes, whose attention Jade was sure she had captured - and whose affections she wouldn't soon let slip away.

So, without even the slightest trace of guilt, she said firmly to the girl standing on her doorstep, "I'm busy, Cat. I don't have time to talk right now." She turned away as she added a bit more harshly, "Come back later - and fucking _call_ first."

Even as Cat protested and reached for her, going so far as to grab the other girl's wrist, Jade shook free of her grasp and walked back inside, closing the door behind her and leaving her _ex_-best friend standing in shock and dismay out in the falling temperatures of the oncoming night.

And for once, Jade felt nothing but the satisfying release of something between an adrenaline rush and an insane sort of _euphoria_, having won an important battle that had long been coming, with the war having gone on so furiously inside her head. Down to the very depths of her mind, she felt nothing but unbridled _pleasure_ with herself and with what she had just done.

But as she made her way up the stairs toward her room, she froze mid-step.

At the top of the stairway sat Tori, looking as though she was more conflicted than she had been when she'd first arrived at Jade's house not twenty minutes prior.

x-x-x

Jade had managed to take the girl to her room, roughly locking the door behind her before leading her over to her bed and making an attempt to pick up where things had left off. Desperately, she wanted to continue - to let this little bout of victory continue on into the night and even the morning with the girl whose lips had been on her only moments before.

But Tori was unmoving and slightly cold against her, and while she made no effort to push the dark-haired girl away, the way her lips showed no sign of reacting and the way her hands made no move to wander immediately turned Jade off.

With a sigh, the blue-eyed girl removed herself, looking to Tori expectantly.

"Are you going to act self-righteous about this?" Jade asked, trying to back her words with whatever anger she could muster when all she felt was hurt and disappointment. "Are you going to tell me you _wouldn't_ have done the same thing?"

"Jade -"

"No," Jade said, shaking her head. She stood, looming over the girl, her hands before her and moving with her words, as though physically showing her frustration at what she perceived as a look of disapproval on the brunette's face. "I'm not taking a preaching from _you_ - you don't know _anything_ about what happened, or why any of this is even -"

"_Jade,_" Tori said, grasping the girl's wrists. Their gazes met, and for once, the brown-eyed girl seemed more than confident in what she was doing. Jade's lips pressed into a line, and as Tori continued, she only listened. "I'm not judging you for that."

The brief silence that followed allowed the words to sink in, and when Jade felt Tori's thumbs rubbing circles over the tops of her wrists - an action that had calmed and comforted her for as long as she cared to remember - she felt her anger dissolving.

"Then what _are_ you judging me for?"

"I'm not judging you at all," Tori replied, pulling on Jade's wrist with one hand as she beckoned to the bed beside her with the other. When Jade finally took a seat, the girl continued, "I just. . ." She sighed, looking off toward the ceiling of the room. "You said if I told you everything, you'd tell me what I wanted to know."

And once more, there wasn't a sound between them. Jade looked to her and thought back on what she had just said to Cat, and how - outside of her own head - they could have sounded much harsher to someone else. But she had wanted them to sting. She'd wanted them to be a slap to the girl's face, to wake her up from whatever little false sense of reality she'd been enveloped in for so long. And yet, at the thought of the redhead crying, and the look of distress coming over Tori's face. . .

All of the triumph she had felt only a few minutes earlier had dispersed along with all of her anger and frustration.

"I'll tell you," Jade murmured weakly - weaker than Tori had heard her speak in some time, if she'd _ever _sounded so genuinely upset. "But you can't talk about it to _anyone_ else. I mean it."

"Alright," Tori spoke softly, her fingers having entwined themselves with Jade's. "Nobody else will know."

Out of habit, Jade couldn't help the feeling of suspicion that crossed through her mind, and her eyes narrowed as she looked over the other girl, thoroughly looking for any sign of mendacity in her expression or posture. Tori could easily sense this, and she squeezed her hand, giving her a look that easily conveyed the words she meant to say: _I promise._

"Where do you want me to start, then?" Jade asked, looking away for a moment as if she was too ashamed to look her in the face - and for a moment, she genuinely _was._

"Wherever you want," Tori replied, and when Jade gave her a look, the brunette went on to say, "Just. . . Tell me what happened, when you two were, you know. . . _closer_."

Wrong choice of words. Jade swore in her mind, thinking for a moment on all that _had_ happened between she and the redhead, and how almost all of it had happened in the very room the two girls were sitting in, (as everyone in the family was _always _home at Cat's house.) And for a moment, the feel of Tori's hand gently grasping her own was causing her to feel claustrophobic as images of the other girl, left standing outside a closed door in more senses than the literal, caused her to feel an intense guilt that hadn't come over her for a time longer than she cared to even _try_ to estimate - a guilt she had felt when she had been with Cat instead of Beck, or Beck instead of Cat.

And the thoughts were running so rampant through her head that all she could do was stare down at the two hands laced with one another, Tori's skin slightly darker than her own, her wrist and fingers only slightly thinner. Although it didn't clear her mind at all, it did help her to remember where she was, who she was with - it kept her head where it needed to be. Had Tori not been there in the first place, she probably would have been dwelling on the recurring thoughts and even those haunting _dreams_ that would so often completely overrun her mind, day and night, in waking and in slumber.

Although she didn't realize it, and although she'd never even stopped to think on it, the obsession with her regrets was far from normal and even farther from healthy.

But as though this torrent of mixed emotions and memories wasn't flooding her mind's entirety, she began to speak.

"Cat and I - we were kind of a _thing_," she paused, taking a deep breath and looking to Tori so as to gauge her reaction, "back when Beck and I were, you know, together."

Tori's brows arched, but to Jade's astonishment, there was no look of disapproval or displeasure written across her expression. Her fingers stayed steady where they were in the dark-haired girl's grasp, and for a moment, Jade let her think on whatever could have been crossing her mind - although she was sure it was something of at least surprise.

"Alright," Tori said, nodding slowly as she looked down to their hands, while the other girl's stare still lingered on her (then somewhat blank) expression. "What. . . what kind of 'thing?' I mean, you know, if you don't -"

"We hooked up a few times," Jade said, cutting her off, although in her mind, she couldn't help but scoff at her own words. It had been more than what she could consider to be just a _few_ times, but what number could differentiate 'a few' from 'many?' She wasn't going to tell the _whole_ truth, but the truth was being told - and that in itself was already a step above flat out lying, (or so she told herself subconsciously.) "We weren't dating or anything - and Beck knew. It all just. . . it all sort of just _happened_."

Tori could have guessed Jade had been with another girl; by the way she had approached her so confidently, and in the way her lips moved so fluidly and effortlessly against her, and by the feel of her hands catching fire to places Tori hadn't even known could feel so hot. But her having been with Cat was something of a surprise.

In all honesty, Tori couldn't have seen Cat _hooking up_ with anybody. In fact, she wasn't sure if the girl knew anything about _any_ _of that_, as ditzy as the girl acted and as childlike as her personality seemed. However, when the brunette recalled having come to a conclusion earlier that day - about Cat being more than she put on, and about her quite possibly being a different person entirely, as far-fetched as the idea might have seemed.

And now that she thought about it - about Cat getting with a new guy every other week - she couldn't say that the notion of Cat _getting around_ was all too hard to believe. And by the way she and Jade had acted not too long ago, (with Cat constantly by Jade's side, touching and hugging her when no one else but Beck was within her personal space, and Jade simply _allowing_ these actions,) the concept of the redhead swinging both ways was certainly _not_ out of the question.

Who was Tori to judge her for anything pertaining to spontaneity with relationships? Getting with guys, getting with girls - and she wasn't even _sure _that she'd even been with a guy, and she'd never have known about anything having to do with her sexuality had Jade not said what she just had. And who was she to judge when Tori was dating - _dating?_ - a girl? A few months prior, she wouldn't have even thought it possible. Of course, the idea had crossed her mind many times, (or, rather, she'd dwelled on the thought of being with another girl for some time,) but with the girl who sat next to her, returning the grip that she was receiving, Tori became aware that things between herself and the Jade had just as well _all sort of just happened._

And because of that, she couldn't judge Cat - or Jade - for any of this. She couldn't logically justify any feeling of resentment toward what had happened between them (whenever it all had happened,) and if Beck had been alright with it, then there had been no harm in it.

Try as she might to tell herself that, Tori couldn't bring herself to _believe_ what she was thinking at all. Whether or not the situation Jade was explaining had anything to do with the breakup of a couple of three years (and the falling-out of two incredibly close friends,) Tori could guess that it had been at least a _part _of the reasoning of it all. While that in itself didn't disturb her, something certainly had - she'd seen just how broken Beck truly was, and she'd just witnessed what Jade had done so incredibly effortlessly to Cat.

And while Beck made Jade out to be the victim who had suffered the most, Tori couldn't help but feel that things were _never _going to be quite that simple, and that there would be more than one person hurt if something similar was to happen between the two of them, Jade and Tori.

The next words slipped from the brunette's mouth without much thought put into them.

"Why did you and Cat just _stop_?"

Jade looked to her, and for once when the redhead was in question, there was no malice behind the girl's eyes.

She wanted to lie to Tori - to tell her something beautiful, something reassuring that would keep her here beside her, possibly for the rest of the night, hopefully for as long as she could have her. And she had words she could say, all flattering to Tori, but all so cruel to Cat that she couldn't bring herself to say any of them. And _goddamnit_, she was sick of lying anyway.

So Jade said without more hesitation than a moment's thought, "Beck and I broke up, and all of a sudden, she wasn't interested. I wasn't her's - I wasn't her 'girlfriend' or whatever anymore. She just. . ." She put her free hand up in front of her, almost as though she was questioning something - her own words, or why she was saying them, or why whatever god was watching had put her in this situation in the first place. "She just sort of _left_ me."

"And you needed her," Tori murmured gently, taking caution in the tact of her words and the care in her voice, as Jade was already looking as though she could break into pieces from the sting of her own words.

"Yeah," Jade spoke nearly inaudibly, her hand falling to her lap. "I did."

Tori gave the girl's fingers a gentle pressure, rubbing with her thumb again, and once more, the blue-eyed girl felt a sense of comfort come over her - and although it wasn't a joyful or even a relaxed comfort, it was the sort of comfort one feels when the rest of the world around them is falling apart. It was the solace she'd sought out for some time from whatever source she could get it from, and it was what she had found in the _new_ brown-eyed girl who then sat beside her, doing something that she knew two others had failed to do when she truly, _genuinely_ needed it - Tori was just _there_.

Jade choked on a whimper that threatened to escape her throat, and she turned her head away from the girl, closing her eyes and talking herself through her emotions in her mind.

"It's okay," Tori said softly. "You can cry if you -"

"_I'm not going to cry_," Jade said harshly, although the break in her voice betrayed her words entirely.

And it wasn't long after that she finally did give in to the tears welling up in her eyes and the shortness of breath that had begun to pain her chest. Tori simply wrapped her arms around her shoulders and allowed her to quietly sob everything that she had welled up within herself for so long, quietly murmuring to her, speaking whatever seemed sweetest or at least the most soothing.

Whatever the two of them were - friends, girlfriends, _two girls together_ - didn't matter. They had no appearances to keep up in the privacy of Jade's room, and while Tori still felt an unsettling churning in her stomach at the memory of the sound of Cat's voice from the doorway below the staircase, she knew that it wasn't the time to question it or think any further into things.

It was the time to try to make up for what Jade had felt she had lost.


	9. Part Nine

**Disclaimer;**

Victorious doesn't belong to me. If it did. . . Well, the show would be _very_ different.

**Warnings;**

This fanfiction contains the lesbian pairing of Jade and Tori. It's rated M, and it's rated thusly for a reason; so if you're not into girl-love and possible adult content, it's all good, but I'd advise you not to read this.

**Author's Note;**

Two months later, part nine's here.

The series, Victorious, is over, and that sucks; but one thing that I can look forward to for quite a while is the fandom. While some people are already rather inactive, I can still catch up on the fanfictions that were written during the series and the ones that are still ongoing. I'll still be writing about these characters until the stories are complete, and while I'll still dabble in fanfiction, I do plan to start taking my own personal ideas more seriously.

This is a rougher chapter in some ways, although you could also call it exciting in other ways. Regardless, things sort of pick up here. I actually just came to realize that this fanfiction was started just over a year ago - in the writing process. I didn't post the first chapter until sometime in April. Things have kind of gotten a little intense since then, both in the storyline and in my life. 2012 was a weird year for me, but I hope 2013 will start looking up.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy part nine.

**Can't Stop**

_Part Nine_

Somehow, the two of them had ended up in Jade's bed - this time, with all their clothes on, (including Tori's sneakers.)

Tori sat up against the headboard of the bed, looking down at the sleeping dark-haired girl's tear-stained cheeks in what little light filtered from the gap between the bathroom door and the wall a few feet in the opposite direction. The brunette noticed that the girl's breaths were still shaking, her lips quivering even after she'd long since fallen asleep, her hair spread wildly across the pillow beneath her head and her hands holding Tori's arm to her chest, as if in some sort of need for the contact even in slumber.

While the position she sat in was incredibly uncomfortable, Tori couldn't bring herself to leave the bed and - and what? She'd decided about an hour ago that she was staying the night, as it was half past ten already. It was a Friday night, and if her mother cared enough to ask where she was, she'd simply say she was at a friend's. The girl couldn't help but grin weakly at the novel idea of her mother being all too curious about anything that didn't revolve around herself, and she was probably "out with the girls" anyway. At _that_ thought, she couldn't help but silently laugh, as "out with the girls" always meant that her mother was out with the coworker of the girl's father; the guy named Gary.

She never understood how a person could cheat on someone else. Although Tori hadn't really been in a steady relationship before, she had been cheated on herself, and obviously, it had hurt and insulted her. How someone could do that to someone else was beyond her, and as she felt her arm falling asleep in the grasp of Jade's clutching fingers, her mind was left to dwell on the subject more than it should.

Of all the words one close to Tori could come up with to describe the girl, there was one that would very rarely be used; _thoughtful_. Tori was energetic, upbeat, even eccentric at times - but the trait most people can't see in another person is their mind's ways of turning. And while the brunette wouldn't ever claim to be as smart as the girl lying next to herself, (although in some ways, she undoubtedly _smarter_,) she still had a head on her shoulders that didn't let anything inside go to waste - the thoughts that crossed her mind were all deliberately studied and analyzed.

Tori tried to be logical in the way she let her mind go to work, but there were times that she couldn't help the way she felt, because that's just the way she felt. It would take a lot of work to undo the negative feelings that would often plague her, (though not so often as they did Jade,) and it would take only the simplest of words to undo all the feelings of happiness and peace. It was like that with everyone, she knew - but in this business of music and money and a _million_ different voices trying to make their way to the top, she'd long ago realized that she needed to grow a thicker skin if she wanted to get anywhere in her career.

And still, little thoughts like a broken marriage could unbalance the state of equilibrium in her mind.

It had been eating at her, hearing Beck's words, and Cat's voice, and the absolute _violence _in the way Jade's tears had finally escaped her. It had stolen the girl's ability to breathe, and even as Tori did all she could to soothe her, it had taken her more than an hour to calm her enough to persuade her into getting beneath her covers and simply resting.

Jade had asked Tori if she would leave once she fell asleep, and Tori had replied, "I'll be here when you wake up."

And she fully intended to stay true to her words.

In the silence of the girl's bedroom, Tori couldn't help but feel as though she was going to go insane. No music; no television for white noise; the walls of the house were sound-proofed well enough to keep any hint of life in the night outside from leaking its way into her room. The only sound that was significant enough to capture her attention was the light whine in Jade's voice as she murmured unintelligibly in her sleep.

As gently as she could manage, she lowered herself so that she was lying on her side, her right arm still captured in the other girl's grasp. Slowly, she pulled it from her, and Jade unconsciously adjusted so that her arms hugged her own chest. Tori moved closer, placing her hands on Jade's wrists and closing her eyes, enjoying the feeling of warmth that emanated from the girl laying beside her.

Almost silently, Jade sleepily murmured something in her sleep that caused Tori's stomach to turn over itself. They hadn't been meant for her, Tori was sure, but the way the words had so easily escaped Jade's lips in her sleep caused a heat to grow within the brunette's chest.

As though testing them herself, Tori repeated what Jade had said. "_I love you_."

x-x-x

Jade stirred around four o'clock that morning only to find that Tori was still asleep beside her. She realized her eyes were still swollen from tears, and in her breath, she still felt a hitch. As she sleepily stretched her back, she was careful not to wake the brunette beside her; she couldn't stand the idea of the girl to seeing her looking so weak _twice_ in one night.

The blue-eyed girl wanted to stay there, curled up next to the other. She was warm, and her breathing was so even and effortless that it had some sort of calming effect, much like that of a metronome keeping her heart beating in time. But even so, she knew she wanted to get herself cleaned up before Tori could wake, and with slight hesitation, she pulled herself away from the girl, quietly and cautiously shifting her way out from under her comforter.

It was dark in the room, all for the bathroom light that she'd mistakenly left on, and as she groggily shuffled toward it, her foot hit something on the ground. Looking down, she realized that Tori's purse had been left on the ground at the end of the bed, the same place she'd left it the night before. Jade's brows pressed as she stared there, her eyes not so much seeing so much as her mind reeling in thought.

Something about last night had felt good. The crying was awful; the look of hurt on Tori's face was cutting; and the memory of Cat's hand on her skin was beginning to make her sore, (although it had felt absolutely fantastic to begin with.) But aside from all of that, she realized that she had finally gotten what she'd been wanting for so long. Tori had helped her - she'd stayed the night, and she was probably unable sleep half the time, (as evidenced by one of the girl's sneakers then sticking out from under her blanket.) And when she'd said she'd stay, she'd meant it, and there she was, lying just where she'd been last night, just as she'd said she would be.

With a small, melancholy smile playing on her lips, Jade sidestepped the purse and made her way the rest of the distance to the bathroom, where she'd decided she'd assess the damage done on her complexion from the few hours earlier.

x-x-x

She'd decided she'd settle for only brushing her teeth and washing her face rather than turning on the shower and possibly waking up the girl in her bed. Jade knew Tori was a lighter sleeper than most others, and so she'd shut the door most of the way to block out the noise of running water in the sink. At first, she was unsure exactly _why_ she didn't want to wake the other girl, but as she ran her hands under the cool water pouring from the faucet, she decided it was so that Tori wouldn't have to see her in such an awful state.

She also decided it was because she didn't want Tori to leave as soon as she did.

As she splashed some of the water over her face, she heard a tentative knock at the bathroom door. Immediately, she grasped for the hand towel on the left side of the mirror, beginning to dab at the water running over her cheeks and forehead.

"Hold on," she said, looking herself over in the mirror.

Jade's eyes were still puffy, although not as red as they'd probably been the night before, and her cheeks looked incredibly hot. But as even as she made a face at herself in the mirror, she realized she wouldn't be able to fix it by the time Tori saw her. With a sigh, she went to the door and opened it the rest of the way, hoping that the light source from behind her would block out most of the imperfections she felt so disgusted by in looking at herself only moments prior.

Tori realized that Jade wasn't meeting her eyes, and as she looked from the girl to the sink behind her, she said, "Sorry, I didn't mean to bother you."

"It's fine," Jade said (too quickly.) "I was just. . . cleaning up."

The two looked to each other for a moment before Tori reached forward and took one of Jade's hands in her own, wrapping her fingers with hers. The dark-haired girl couldn't help but react, her fingers gripping the other girl's, and as she looked to the brunette, Jade found that she couldn't meet her eyes again.

Crying was something of a weakness. While she'd done it in front of Tori before - both acting and completely genuinely - she found that when it had been as violent as her sobbing the night before, it was thoroughly embarrassing. But before she could tell Tori to stop looking at her, the brown-eyed girl smiled softly, pulling herself closer to Jade and placing a light, tender kiss on her lips.

Jade responded, her eyes lidding and her mouth beginning to move against Tori's. It was soft and easy, and as they stood there, the brunette's hands finding their way up to the other girl's hips, and Jade's hands reaching up to cup the sides of Tori's face, the two found that this was the first kiss they could remember sharing that was nothing more than simple and loving between both of them.

Tori retracted, opening her eyes to find that Jade looked almost pained. For a moment, the brunette could only stare in bewilderment, wondering what she had done to cause her any harm. She backed away slightly, slowly allowing Jade the space she'd assumed she was needing, but Jade's arms immediately reached for her and pulled the girl back to her. Her hands clenched onto the back of Tori's shirt, grasping her closer as she hid her face in the side of Tori's neck, the scent of her hair permeating her senses and (somehow) calming her welling emotions once more.

Immediately, Tori returned the gesture with a warm, steady embrace. For once, she felt stronger than Jade - and to her, that was unsettling.

She had never known Jade to be so weak. After the past few weeks, Tori had only seen just how devastatingly, _intimidatingly_ strong Jade could be. Physically, she was frightening, but what had truly fascinated Tori was the power she wielded psychologically. The fact that Jade could make her submit so easily without so much as the slight of her hand, and the way that some words (so simple) could cause her chest to ache - it enticed her, as if her strong, dark, and sometimes borderline-_criminal_ ways of working were playing on the keys of her curious mind.

But this Jade, whose eyes threatened tears and whose voice was choking on her own words, was nothing she would have ever been able to expect based on her previous behavior. But somehow over the time that Tori had come to know the girl she was now holding so tightly to her chest, she'd known that she couldn't always be so strong. Nobody could.

Tori could vaguely empathize. Her world had begun to come apart at the seams, though she was sure that her own issues were miniscule in comparison to Jade's. But like Jade, her home was broken, and like Jade, she sometimes found that she had nobody to turn to. . . And in knowing that she could be that person for Jade, Tori took all the comfort she could.

And there was solace in knowing that Jade was just as pathetically human as she was herself.

"Please don't leave," she murmured to the brunette, her voice shaking and her body trembling.

On whether that was a request for her to physically stay the rest of the night or whether it was a request far more demanding, Tori didn't stop to ponder.

Rather, she simply responded, "I promise I won't."

x-x-x

It was half-past-five in the morning when they decided they couldn't stay in Jade's room any longer. The two set at the small, round table in the kitchen, around which there only sat enough chairs for the both of them, and they ate whatever food Jade's mother had bothered to buy for her the day before she left for the trip she'd just embarked on two nights prior.

"Where's she going?" Tori asked through a spoonful of sugary cereal.

"Chicago, I think," Jade replied, shaking her head. "She wasn't really clear about the details."

Tori hardly considered her mother's whereabouts to be a minor _detail_, but she nodded, taking another bite.

"What does she do?"

Jade's brows pressed slightly, looking almost frustrated with the question. She paused for a moment, setting her spoon down and looking down at the table before her.

"I'm not really sure," she said hesitantly. "I think she's an administrator of sales or. . . I don't know. Something like that."

The brunette couldn't help but think how painfully unaware Jade and her mother were of each other. They seemed so detached from any sort of interpersonal family life, almost as if there had never been a relationship there in the first place. For some reason, it stirred a feeling of discomfort in the pit of her stomach that she couldn't quite shake.

The thought crossed her mind that she could feel that way quite possibly due to the similar nature of her own relationship with her mother, (although she could never claim to feel quite so distant as Jade seemed to be from her mother.)

She swallowed the lump in her throat and finished the last bite of her cereal.

Jade looked out the window above the sink. The streetlamps were still on outside, and although there were lights on in the kitchen as well, she could tell that the sun still hadn't come up. Fall had begun, and she'd started to realize that the days were growing shorter - and still, it felt as though it was still summer.

She felt lost. Time was a concept that she couldn't bring herself to even _try_ to understand. One moment, it stood still - as it seemed to when she had kissed Tori - and other moments, it moved by too fast - when she spent nights wasted trying (in vain) to catch a good night's sleep. Jade felt as though she couldn't keep track of the way the world was moving around her when she seemed to only revolve around something that shouldn't have been such a big deal in her life.

And as she looked from the window to Tori, she had a feeling that the brunette could have quite possibly shared her sentiments.

"Is your mom going to get worried?" Jade asked, and the question sounded almost quick and abrupt compared to the soft silence of some brief understanding the two had just shared.

"I don't think so," Tori replied quietly. "And last night, I think she was out with - with _someone_."

Jade arched a brow, already understanding where Tori was going with her sentence. She sighed, shaking her head before half-asking, half-stating, "Gary?"

"Yeah."

The dark-haired girl nodded, trying to convey some sort of sympathy, (something she'd always found she had a hard time with.) Something similar had happened in her family before; although it had been her father getting a little too friendly with some other woman, it had quietly and underhandedly undone their family, hence why it was currently only Jade and her mother living in the big, empty house.

And things seemed unchanged, almost as if her father still lived there; there will still pictures of the three of them all hanging on the walls, sitting on the dressers and the side tables. Jade never really tried to notice it, but the images of her family (that had honestly never truly been _whole_) always caused her a tinge of pain to burst through her. So as to avoid them, and all the thoughts and regrets from her childhood and early-teenage years, she had spent many of her nights wherever else she could, though primarily at Beck's and at Cat's.

She wanted out again. Desperately, she wanted a new safe haven - a place where she didn't have to feel so entrapped and smothered by the sadness of a childhood she never truly felt she'd had. There were a few places scattered around the city that she called her 'second homes,' (the coffee shop, a cafe a few blocks down, even the school she spent so much time at,) but it had been more than just a while that she'd had some place to try to sleep off a bad day.

Tori wouldn't have been able to know why Jade slept so hard. Of all the people who had seen Jade sleep before, only Beck really understood the reasons behind it. Jade could sleep through a nuclear war - that much was evident - but the only way she found herself able to do it was by going several nights at a time without sleep.

Sleep was a scarce and readily-accepted thing for Jade. On the nights she could catch even an hour's rest, she was thankful - and for the nights when she actually _dreamed_ of something, she felt nothing less than blessed. However, on the nights when sleep didn't come, she would simply lie quietly and tell herself that simply closing her eyes for a while would get her through the day that would soon be upon her.

Those were the times that time passed too excruciatingly slowly and too incredibly rapidly all at the same time.

She found that it was easier to find slumber with someone else in her bed. They didn't even have to be _touching _her, but the feeling of someone warm and breathing lying beside her offered her enough peace to put her to sleep, even in her roughest of times.

That had been evident the night before. She'd sobbed for over an hour, and somehow, she'd managed to fall asleep. Crying was a painful and tiring thing, of course, but had she done that in solitude, she wouldn't have caught even a moment's worth of rest.

Jade was still slightly embarrassed about that, and as she looked up at Tori, she couldn't help but feel as though she was weaker in the eyes of the other girl.

And Jade had decided that she was _not_ to be the weak one in this relationship.

_Relationship._

"Do you want to go to your place for a while?" Jade asked, her eyes looking off to the cabinets as she swirled around what was left in her bowl with her spoon. "I just - I _really _want to get out of the house."

Tori was taken aback, but without hesitation, she replied, "Sure, that's fine."

x-x-x

"I should really warn you about Trina," Tori said tentatively.

She was sitting in the front passenger seat of Jade's car, and the two of them had been listening to Ginger Fox on the radio. Jade's eyes left the road for only a moment to glance over at Tori, her face looking rather amused by the statement.

"What about her?" she asked, a small laugh threatening in her voice.

Trina had been suspecting some sort of _thing_ between Tori and Beck, and the girl desperately wanted to make sure Jade understood that what she had told her the night before was completely and totally honest. Trina had a way of making everything worse, and if there was still any trace of doubt left in Jade's mind about her ex-boyfriend and her current girlfriend, Tori wanted to be able to put it to an end before they walked through her front door of her home.

"Well," Tori began, her thumbs twiddling with one another. Trina's been kind of a -"

"Pain in the ass?" Jade interrupted. Amused and smiling, she continued, "A talentless bitch?"

"That's my _sister_," Tori said, trying to sound as though she was actually upset.

Jade arched a brow, and the brunette immediately realized that there was a small and suppressed smile on her _own _face.

"Okay, yes," she admitted, and Jade gave quiet laugh.

Tori paused a moment, thinking over her words. She wanted to make sure that nothing she said sounded suspicious - as Jade was already suspicious enough (about everything) - and that everything she said made complete and total sense the first time, (as she did have a way of messing up her own words when she felt nervous.)

"But seriously, Jade," Tori said, and she watched as the smile faded away from the blue-eyed girl's features. "You know how Trina is. She hasn't figured out about - about _us,_ but she thinks I'm up to something."

"Did she see you with Beck?" Jade questioned calmly, (although her words still managed to cause a heaviness in Tori's chest.)

"Yeah." Tori then murmured quietly, "That, and she saw the hickey you gave me before that."

"Oh _God_," Jade said, and while she sounded completely angry, there was a strange, foreign grin on her face. "How hard is it to hide a freaking _hickey_?"

"You gave me one on my _neck_," Tori retorted, trying not to smile at Jade's expression. "And it's _just now _going away."

"Alright, alright," the dark haired girl laughed. "I won't do that again. Not on your neck, anyway."

Tori looked back to the road, her hands finally relaxing, (as her fingers had been gripping for her pants legs.) Then, she quietly asked, "And about Trina thinking -"

"Don't worry about it," Jade replied, cutting her off. "I believe you."

x-x-x

Jade sat on the couch, absently flipping from channel to channel on the Vegas' television. Tori had gone up to her bathroom to get a shower and put on a new set of clothes, and seeing as it was only a quarter until seven on a Saturday, Jade sat alone on the large, empty couch. She could hear the water running upstairs, as the television was nearly muted, and by the sound of a muffled tumbling sound, Tori had quite possibly managed to trip over something upstairs.

As she absently flipped through the channels, she decided that there was simply nothing on worth watching, (and why would there be at that time of morning?) She put the television on the Travel Channel and let the infomercials run on the screen for some sort of distraction from the stillness around her.

Up in her bathroom, Tori had just brushed her teeth and was toweling her hair dry. She tried her best to stay quiet - Trina was only a room away, and if she awoke to find Tori coming home this early in the morning, it would be a damning contribution to Trina's collection of _evidence_ supporting Tori's and Beck's supposed relationship.

For a moment, the brunette looked at herself in the mirror, appalled that she'd just thought like Trina would.

After she'd dried her hair enough to keep it from dripping, she quickly ran a brush through it before walking out of her bathroom and toward her room in her towel. She treaded quietly, afraid to wake anyone up, as no one in the Vega house would be up until at least seven-thirty - and even then, it would only be her father getting ready for work, (as he usually ended up working Saturdays, regardless of whether or not he was supposed to go in on the weekends.)

As she gently opened the door to her room, she froze. Beneath her own covers was her sister, lying with her limbs haphazardly sprawled across the bed as though she'd been struck by a car. She looked as though she had passed out there sometime last night by the way her hair was strewn about her face and the pillows beneath her, and her makeup had been taken off before lying down there.

Tori half-panicked as she stood in the doorway, looking at the girl lying there. She had hoped that Trina had passed out after Tori had gone to Trina's - and perhaps she had, but she had on Tori's own bed.

The younger sister slipped her way inside her room, silently edging her way toward her closet. She would just grab a shirt and some shorts and be out of there, she told herself, but as she approached the closet and the dresser beside it, she heard a rustling behind her. Trina shifted beneath her sheets, still sleeping, but the fact that he had actually _moved_ told Tori that she was closer to waking up than she had been hoping.

Carefully, she took one of her shirts off the hanger, and to her dismay, the metal rattled and rang against the two others to the left and right of it. Without much hesitation, she quickly moved to grab a folded pair of sweatpants that had been set on her chest of drawers before heading straight to the door.

She didn't look behind her as she swiftly made her way down the stairs and to the couch where Jade sat, still wearing only the towel wrapped around her.

"Why are you -"

"Trina's in _my room_," Tori shouted in a whisper. "She was waiting for me last night!"

Jade gave her a look that said she was beginning to hate Trina more than she had before, (and that in itself would be a noteworthy accomplishment.)

"I want to freaking _kill_ your stupid sister," she growled. "And pull up your towel; it's distracting me."

Tori immediately realized that her right breast was almost completely exposed, and with her face burning again, turned away from Jade and adjusted her towel before straightening out the shirt she was about to put on.

She briskly pulled the thing over her shoulders and the top of her towel, glancing up to the stairway to make sure Trina wasn't watching. Then, as quickly as she could manage, she stepped into her sweatpants, and her towel dropped as she pulled them the rest of the way up.

"God, Tori - what are you trying to _do to me_?" Jade asked half-jokingly, although her eyes were settled on the tightly-fitting sweatpants that seemed to grip her ass so nicely.

Tori took one last look toward the stairs before she picked up the towel and placed it over her shoulders. She took a seat beside Jade, subconsciously sitting only inches away from her. The dark-haired girl turned to face her, her brow arched, and as Tori realized she was almost _on top_ of the girl beside her, she immediately moved to sit on the other section of the couch.

The brunette couldn't help but feel the coolness of sitting alone, and with her hair still slightly wet, she wanted desperately to run up to her room and take her blanket off her bed. She wanted to curl up with Jade beneath it and watch Saturday morning cartoons, (although she was honestly unsure if Jade would ever watch anything of the like.) However, when she looked to Jade, the pair of blue eyes she caught with her own looked away rather quickly, dispersing her wishful thinking.

She'd risk waking Trina anyway, even if she grabbed one of the fleece throws out of the closet upstairs. Sighing, she leaned back on the couch, crossing her arms over her chest and placing her legs beneath herself to try to get some sort of warmth.

"Why are we watching a Pajelehoocho commercial?" Tori asked.

"Because it's not even seven in the morning," Jade replied, placing her arms over her chest, (as Tori's warm skin had caused something in the pit of her stomach to stir.) "But seriously - who would buy one of these stupid things?"

x-x-x

Putting two and two together wasn't something Trina Vega was all too good at. She told herself that she was the type of person who read between the lines - that she could tell that there was always something more than what the naked eye could see. Nothing was ever as simple as it seemed, no matter what the case.

So as she walked into the living room that morning, her hair tangled and falling over her shoulders and the large, oversized shirt hanging halfway off her body, she was both completely oblivious to an ultimate reality and completely aware of an absolute fabrication of her mind's strange and awkward workings.

Trina saw the two of them sitting there, watching Spongebob on the television - and at first, it completely baffled her. The _ex_-girlfriend hanging out with the _current_ girlfriend simply didn't make any sense. Of course, nothing would make sense if she allowed herself to only see what was before her; obviously, one of the two girls on the couch had some sort of ulterior motive, and the other girl was simply being betrayed into thinking they were only just hanging out together.

As she quietly slipped into the kitchen, believing herself to be unnoticed by the two in the living room, she allowed herself to sink down below the height of the cabinet enough so that she could only just barely see what was happening in the other room.

It must have been Tori, she told herself - Tori was hanging out with Jade to throw her off the tracks of her love affair with the demon's ex-boyfriend.

It all made sense to Trina, whereas to most anyone else, the situation would be plain as day; two frenemies sitting together. Nothing more, nothing less.

The older Vega sister watched the two girls, trying her best to make out as much of their conversation as she could. Their voices were hushed, and even as she held her breath to catch even a snippet of their words, she simply could not hear what they were saying.

Then, without warning, Jade called out rather loudly, "Just come out here, idiot."

Trina stifled a swear before standing and shuffling her way out into the living room, the two girls' eyes following her.

"What are you _doing_?" Tori asked. "And why are you wearing my shirt?"

The older girl looked down at what she was wearing then back to her sister. "I didn't know it was yours."

"I wear that thing to bed all the time," Tori said, her brow arching as she watched Trina fidget beneath her scrutinizing gaze.

Jade cast her glance over to Tori for only a brief second, and immediately, she saw the faint remainder of the mark she'd left there on her neck. Quickly, she returned her stare to Trina, who in turn settled her eyes on the mark just an inch below Tori's jawline.

"You're acting weird - even for you," Tori said slowly.

"Where'd you get that hickey?" she demanded quickly, changing the subject.

Tori froze.

The blue-eyed girl watched quietly, her expression looking only slightly annoyed. She could pass for simply being irritated by the presence of the girl she absolutely couldn't stand, but inside her head, she was bordering a panic attack. Her mind raced, and as her stare cast over the younger of the two sisters, she began to think to the girl, _Say something, Tori. Don't just sit there._

"What are you talking about?" Tori asked, her body shifting slightly so that she felt the mark on her skin couldn't be seen quite so easily.

Jade could have slapped herself in the face. Tori was quite possibly the worst liar she'd ever met.

"Why don't you just tell me, Tori?" Trina asked. "I'm your _sister._"

The younger brunette felt as though it would be much simpler to just drop dead on the spot before any more questions could be asked. Try as she might, she couldn't quite manage to stop her heartbeat, and as she tried to speak any of the words that would come to her mind, Jade quickly and sharply cut her off.

"Don't remind her how unfortunate she is," she growled.

Trina didn't quite catch the insult, but she _did_ notice the defensiveness with which Jade had spoken. She moved closer to the couch, causing Jade to grow rigid. Trina's eyes met hers for a moment, and although Jade's expression stayed rather plain, there was a furious heat growing within her, made evident by the slight twitching of her left brow.

Then, without much warning, Trina tackled Tori, casting her backward and onto the couch. Immediately, the two sisters were scrambling against each other, Trina trying to get a look at Tori's neck and Tori trying desperately to throw her older (heavier) sister off of her. The two screamed at each other as their hands pulled at each other's hair, and one of their knees went into the other's stomach.

However, as Trina had almost managed to pin Tori down, two hands grabbed her shoulders. As soon as the older sister turned to look behind her, Jade hurled her off of Tori and onto the floor between the couch and the coffee table. She groaned, rolling over onto her back.

"What the _hell?!_" Trina spat.

As Jade moved to loom over the girl on the floor, there came a sequence of footsteps. They made their way closer, and when Jade looked to the stairway, she found Tori's father standing at the bottom, followed closely by his wife.

"What's going on?" Mr. Vega asked quickly, concern in his tone.

Trina pulled herself up from off the floor, and as Jade cast her a hard glare, she quickly backed away.

"Trina _tackled_ me!" Tori said. "We were just sitting here, and -"

"Jade punched me!" Trina cried, placing a hand over the right side of her forehead.

Immediately, the dark-haired girl looked to her. There was blood rising to the skin beneath the cover of Trina's hand, and she could only guess that the girl had smacked her head on either the floor or the table.

"Jade," Tori's mother began tentatively, moving toward the three girls along with her husband.

"She didn't punch her!" Tori yelled. "She pulled her off of me! Trina was - she was on top of me and _hurting_ me!"

"It wasn't my fault!" Trina whined, her head beginning to pulsate with pain.

The girls' father made his way to Trina, pulling her hand away from her forehead to reveal a bruise that had been left there. The older sister immediately yelped as his fingers brushed across the area, and although it was a blatantly melodramatic response, the discoloration _did _already look quite severe.

Tori's mother moved over to Jade, and quickly, Tori made her way between them.

"I think it would be best if you just go -"

"She didn't do anything," Tori interjected. "Jade, tell her!"

A million thoughts were going through Jade's head as she looked over the woman she had come to truly despise. There were bags under her alarmed and widened eyes - had she not slept? The dark-haired girl recalled Tori having said she was out with someone the night before, and although she was two feet off, the smell of something foreign, (something alcoholic,) still lingered on her, telling her that the woman hadn't had the decency or the common sense to shower and brush her teeth before returning to her husband, (whenever she had.)

Holly Vega was an awful woman and a truly despicable mother, and although Jade could have listed a thousand justifications for Tori's mother to simply be struck dead, she simply shook her head.

"I didn't punch Trina," she began, her words almost drowned out by Trina's incessant wailing. "But I think she's right. I'll talk to you later, Tori."

Tori turned to grasp for Jade, but the blue-eyed girl shrugged her hand off her shoulder, making her way around the coffee table. As she passed Trina, she kept her eyes down, even as the girl screamed something at her. Mr. Vega gave Jade a look, contemplating the truth in Trina's claims against her, but as Jade opened the door, he couldn't bring himself to think on it any further and instead returned his attention back to his daughter.

"Jade," Tori called pleadingly, but Jade silently closed the door behind her.

Tori wanted to follow her, to go with her. She wanted to tell the girl to just drive her as far away as the car could take her - out to the desert, if not farther. Tori didn't want to be here with the family she felt she didn't even truly know, and if she had to exist in the first place in that moment, she wanted to exist only with Jade.

But the spell of shock and dismay evanesced with the sound of her mother's voice.

"Why do you two have to fight all the time?" the woman asked from behind her, sounding more inconvenienced than concerned.

A burst of anger welled up within Tori, and with her hands curled into fists and her eyes burning, she snarled, "Why don't you just go back to Gary?"

Mrs. Vega's face was askew in shock as Tori boldly held her gaze, even as her eyes began to flood with tears.

x-x-x

After her door slammed shut, Jade fastened her seatbelt and jammed her key in the ignition all at the same time. Her engine roared to life, and within a few seconds, she was squealing out into the street, leaving tire marks on the pavement as she shifted into drive without even touching the brakes. Within the blink of an eye, Tori's driveway was growing smaller in her rearview mirror.

The girl knew that Tori's parents wouldn't pursue any legal actions against her. Either Trina would break and tell the truth or Tori would make a good enough case in Jade's defense.

Aside from that, Jade doubted that they'd ever believe Trina based solely on her own testimony. They knew she was dramatic and insufferable, as they'd openly displayed their outright distaste for her on several occasions - but if Jade had stayed to try to fight for her innocence, she knew that it would only make her look guilty. And still, somehow, she couldn't help but feel a sharp, stabbing pain in her chest from having left Tori to fight a battle for her.

Although she wanted nothing more than to turn back and get the girl, her foot pressed harder against the gas pedal as she drove away.

If Jade's intuition was correct, the whole incident would blow over in the Vega house by the time noon came around.

And Jade's instincts were very rarely wrong.


End file.
